The Rich Roll Podcast - Eating Cultivated Meat: Dr. Uma Valeti’s Moonshot To Engineer The Future Of Food & End Factory Farming

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Dr. Uma Valeti is the founder and CEO of UPSIDE Foods, pioneering the cultivated meat revolution. This conversation explores the cutting-edge world of growing real meat from animal cells without industrial farming. We discuss Uma’s journey from cardiologist to food tech innovator, the science behind cultivated meat, and its potential to address global food security and environmental challenges. Along the way, I stepped out of my 17-year vegan comfort zone to taste-test UPSIDE’s cultivated chicken products. Uma is a visionary. And this conversation is mind-expanding. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors:  AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉 drinkAG1.com/richroll Waking Up: Unlock a FREE month, plus $30 OFF 👉 wakingup.com/RICHROLL On: Enter RichRoll10 at the checkout to get 10% OFF your first order 👉 on.com/richroll Birch: Get 25% off ALL mattresses and 2 free eco-rest pillows 👉 BirchLiving.com/richroll Squarespace: Use offer code RichRoll to save 10% off 👉 Squarespace.com/RichRoll  Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

It's been quite a long time since I've tasted chicken. Oh. How long? 17 years. Wow. Well, should we do a testing? We should. Absolutely.

Let's do it. This is a big moment, Uma. What if I told you that you could create meat, I'm talking beef, pork, poultry, seafood, but without killing a single animal? We decided that we'll make a meatball from cow cells. I will never forget the moment I put that in my mouth and bit into it. And every single neuron in my brain and taste buds and aromas and every,

all the five senses, they lit up saying that this is meat. The demand for meat has continued to grow and grow and grow despite all the challenges. Let's figure out a way to have what we love, but let it not come with this incredible downside of wreaking havoc on the planet. This is the most risky path, but this is the most worthwhile path. but this is the most worthwhile pal. Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. The future of food and food innovation. These are recurring themes of this podcast,

which include keeping tabs on the rapidly advancing world of cultivated meats or cultured meat, which for those unfamiliar is genuine animal meat. It's beef, it's poultry, it's pork, it's seafood that is produced by cultivating animal cells directly and arranging them in the same or similar structure as animal tissues to replicate the sensory and nutritional profiles of conventional meat, which of course in turn eliminates the need

to raise and farm animals for food. It's pretty radical for some, this is controversial. It's political as evidenced recently by bands on its sale in both Florida and Arizona, motivated to protect cattle ranchers, but it's innovation I support for ethical and environmental reasons. What it isn't is far-fetched.

While it might sound like science fiction, today's guest is at the cutting edge of turning this futuristic concept into a tangible reality. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. Okay. Uma Valetti is the founder and CEO of Upside Foods. He is Cultivated Meat's original pioneer and brightest star. And it's a really interesting story. He was a Mayo Clinic trained cardiologist who ended up walking away from a professorship at Stanford Medical School

to embark upon this unprecedented audacious mission, which is to innovate an ethical solution to animal agriculture to render its ills obsolete. This conversation canvases that mission. We discuss what cultivated meat is and isn't. We talk about Uma's background as the first mover in the space, why he believes cultivated meat is one viable solution for environmental degradation. We also cover the processes and challenges of producing cultivated meat at scale, including navigating the current political

and regulatory landscape. And Uma addresses concerns around safety and the reasons why he believes cultivated meat is healthier than conventional meat for humans and the planet. As a bonus, Uma actually cooked up some of his fare. He challenged me to try it. It's a challenge.

Some of you might be shocked, I accepted. And you heard it here first, me actually eating chicken, something I have not done in about, I don't know, 17 years. So prepare to have your perceptions challenged and enjoy. This is me and Uma Valladi. It's delightful to have you here today. Nice to see you again.

We were chatting moments before the podcast, trying to remember when we first met. I think it was 2017, maybe, maybe 18, but I think it might've been earlier than that. And we've been going back and forth on trying to make this happen ever since. You committed to doing it, but you said when the moment is right.

And I said to you the other day, I've learned not to chase these things that happen when they're meant to happen. So here we are today. And I'm convinced that it was meant to happen in this moment. Yeah, thanks, Rich. It's been six years since we met.

And I think it was early 2018, right? After we closed our series A financing and Kimball Musk and Christiana Musk had joined us in that. And we were at a summit event. A summit event, I remember it, I remember it. My mind is blurry on years and times. I don't know if that's an age thing or a post COVID thing, but I have difficulty with timeframe.

So 2018, well, it's been a minute, glad to have you here. And I think the best place to start is just with you talking a little bit about this mission that you're on. How do you define cultivated meat? And I think maybe share a little bit about the languaging and the verbiage around this, because the labeling keeps changing.

It was cell-based meat or lab-grown meat, cellular agriculture. There's been many terms associated with what you do. We're now calling it cultivated meat. So what is that? Okay, so cultivated meat is meat grown from animal cells, period. So, if we grow beef, we're growing it from cow cells. If we grow chickens, we're growing it from chicken cells. And if we grow ham or pork, we're growing it from pig cells,

so on and so on and so forth. And the idea is people love meat. And in the past, we've always been programmed to think meat is equal to animal. What cultivated meat is doing is saying that meat is equal to animal cells. And it's a paradigm shift. But ultimately, when you look at the building blocks of meat, it's animal cells. So, cultivated meat is just going to the building blocks and saying, we are going to grow animal cells directly. And we'll introduce that in foods you love. It could be a hot dog. It could be a sausage. It could be a chicken breast. It could be sausage. It could be a chicken breast. It could be a hamburger. And all of these formats are possible to do. And as we get better and better with the science and the scaling of it at a cost people can buy, we'll be able to do more complex meats like steaks. And so, that's cultivated meat.

And the reason we have all of these terms that you talked about, cell-based or cultured, is I think it is a side effect of the effort to be transparent in this industry. Because if we build a company and the industry that we call is a big tent, I think a fundamental need for that is transparency of how we are getting to the next stages. And transparency comes with its significant upsides, but it also comes with its own downsides, which is we are starting to share things that are forming as they are forming. And sometimes we may not actually take it to the finish line. And that's kind of what happened with cell-based, what's happened with cultured. Because what we realized is we need to arrive at a name that is accurate and one that is respectful, one that is inspiring and brings people together. So, if I look at cultivated, it is accurate because we are actually cultivating and growing cells.

It is accurate because we are actually cultivating and growing cells. It is unifying because it brings people together versus disparaging and saying, hey, we are not this or we are not that. And it's differentiating. One of the most important things we need to do here is we've got to differentiate how this comes to the plate. This is not a product of slaughter, but it is a product that we love to eat and it tastes good. And I think ultimately, like you said, 50 years from now, if you look back, I think our kids and grandkids will be shocked to hear about the hundreds of billions of animals that went through this assembly line of a process no one loved but did not have a solution for. And I think this offers a solution. The hill is hard to climb,

but we've already passed the first hill. I'd say there's six more hills. I'd say in my, there's seven chapters to this. We're done with the first chapter. What are the other six chapters? They are yet to be written. So, I don't know. There are some chapters that are unnamed, but the next chapter is a chapter of scale, proof of scale, which then means making a pound of meat, cultivated meat, was an incredible accomplishment because no one had ever done it before. And making a pound of meat that went through regulatory approval with the U.S.

Department of Agriculture and the FDA and those agencies saying, yes, these are foods safe to eat was an incredible accomplishment. Having been able to sell that for a dollar for someone for exchange of value was an incredible accomplishment. That's the last chapter. The next chapter is taking that pound of meat and making it into hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of meat. If we can produce a million plus pounds under one roof, starting off from the first few cells all the way to the first few million pounds,

to me, that is proof of scale that suddenly opens the door for a lot of people to come and say, I want that in my zip code. So that's the second chapter. The third chapter is continuing to lower the price a consumer pays. Because in this next chapter,

there'll be premium pricing because it is expensive to make it. But in the third chapter, I think it's trying to lower the price to get to a place where most people will be able to buy it. And then the chapter after that, this gets me incredibly excited as a physician, is can we make meat healthier? Can we make it better? Can we lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases? Can we lower the risk of chronic diseases? Can we lower the risk of chronic diseases? Can we lower the risk of cancers?

Because we take for granted the food we eat now, and we think of that as the gold standard. But I'd like us to be able to challenge it with a combination of cultivated meats and plant-based products coming to the market, that we could actually have a positive impact on health and not take for granted that a third of us in the world should die from cardiovascular diseases

or a third of us should die from cancers and 20% from chronic diseases and completely flip the paradigm and say, we would be able to do that if we start looking at food as a way to prolong lives. And I think that is a chapter that is coming. And then there's a couple of unwritten chapters. Right, but within that chapter, the idea being that you could toggle some markers to prolong lives. And I think that is a chapter that is coming. And then there's a couple of unwritten chapters.

But within that chapter, the idea being that you could toggle some markers to lower the fat content or reduce the saturated fat and maybe up the omega-3s or enhance the protein content, et cetera, to make a healthier version of what we currently eat as a species? Yeah, I mean, that is such white space.

And I think it's going to go in parallel with advancements in medicine, because when I think in the very near future, all of us will have people in our own families that have been saved by incredible advances happening in medicine from cell therapies, from gene editing, to saying that if a child has leukemia and the only hope for the child is cell therapies or gene editing, and that child lives a normal life, you don't need a lot of examples like that.

You just need a few interspersed here and there to show the power and potential of what can be done. I think it'll start first in medicine, which is already happening. And those benefits will be starting to translate into agriculture and food. And as we start tackling the societal challenges of how do we make foods healthier? Because there's a silly debate going on right now,

which is people are calling processed foods are bad and everything that just is just off the hoof or just dug out of the earth and eating is healthy. I do think that's a really dangerous direction we are heading in because you could eat a lot of whole foods unprocessed and die. But what type of processing is good, what type of processing is not helpful, I think is a science that's just developing. I am very excited to see where the progress is. And I feel like meat will benefit from it. Plants will benefit from it.

What is your mission? Well, my mission really is to be able to do the most meaningful work that I see needs to be done in the world. And for me, it was this repeated reminder for me every time I wake up that wouldn't it be great if I spend my life if I spend my life on working on preserving the choice of doing what we love to do at the same time as protecting life on planet Earth. And I couldn't have been able to say it like that when I was growing up, but I grew up in a family that was just happy, joyful. My mom taught physics in college. My dad was a veterinarian. And I was around animals all the

time. I grew up in a meat-eating family. And Sundays were really like fun days because Sunday lunch was chicken, mutton, lamb. And I'm like, I love Sunday lunch. And gradually, I started getting exposed to how that delightful dish came to the plate. And I'm like, I love this. And as I grew older and started having experiences in life, I realized that it's not just me. There's a lot of people who feel like that. But there wasn't a solution that could really preserve and protect what we love at the same time as protecting life. And that kind of became my calling, I believe.

And I never thought it would become that. I grew up wanting to be a doctor. I grew up wanting to save lives. And I grew up eventually saying that the best way for me to save lives when people literally are, have no hope is being a cardiologist. Became a cardiologist. Started to do all of the things i dreamed of doing but this thought kept

coming back to me every single morning and uh i think then it translated into this inner question i kept asking myself what's the purpose of my life and that led to this mission statement of a singular way of saying i would love to be able to do something to protect choice and protect life. So I would say that's my mission. Yeah, that's beautifully put. It seems like the sort of light bulb moment for you was during your stint as a cardiologist, when you were like working on heart tissue, right?

And this idea occurring to you that, well, if we can create or cultivate heart tissue cells, why couldn't we do this in the meat space? And that becoming the kind of kernel of the idea of setting you on this whole new trajectory that has taken you out of medicine and into this world of entrepreneurship and trying to tackle honestly,

like what is one of the biggest and most existential problems that we face as a species, which is the impact of factory farming on the planet and the kind of ethical dilemma that it presents for billions of people all over the world. Yeah, it was a very circuitous, most inefficient path to take to finding your calling, I think, if you say, you know,

I had to go through medical school, residency, fellowship, and practicing as a cardiologist, finally to come upon this idea of, could you grow meat from animal cells? And it was like that light bulb moment where the light kept coming on and off, blinking on and off. And finally, it just became so bright, shining at me, saying that, why is no one in the world doing it? And I kept going back to science, going back to talking to colleagues, going back to people who have been talking about this in academia. And realized that this idea existed, that you could grow meat from animal cells. But I had to go through this process of trying to treat patients who had a cardiac arrest or a heart attack or a large heart attack and trying to take cells from their bone marrow

and purify the ones that have the ability to regrow into tissues and re-inject them into patients' hearts and then follow them over a period of time to see how their heart pumping function was improving or not improving. And the more and more I started doing these cases myself and watching this, this almost started like a whisper in my mind, like, hey, this should be done to, yeah, this can be done. And I'm like, I've looked at all the science and the fundamentals exist there. Why is nobody doing it? And then I'm like, okay, I'll ask people to do it. I still wasn't thinking about doing it myself. And I literally talked to any scientist I could find, engineer I could find, or a thinker, philosopher.

And I realized very quickly that while the idea seemed really appealing, because it had never been done before. The risks seemed to be inordinately high to give up what one was very comfortable doing or well-established doing. Like, they could be a cardiologist like me, or they could be the head of a laboratory, or they could be, you know, doing something in pharma, biotech, with well-established great track records of making a great living or getting a great return on whatever you put time into.

And that became the fundamental observation I made that people were just not willing to give up. Right. Why trade this very secure career path that you worked so hard to get to this place for this very risky, I mean, it's essentially a moonshot, right? It's this thing nobody has ever done before.

There seems to be some scientific evidentiary basis for its viability, but the number of questions and the unknowns and the, you know, all the kind of obstacles and barriers that one inevitably is going to face should they embark upon this is impediment enough to, you know, keep it safe back at the hospital. Uncannily, I was guilty of that

because here I was seeing all of this and expecting somebody else to do it and talking to everybody and trying to encourage them to do it. And it required my wife and kids to sit me down at a table and said, they said, dad, we've been hearing you talk about this for years. Why are you not doing it? And it was like one of those blind spots for me. And I kept asking the question then,

so why am I not doing it? And it was very clear. The risk was too much. In which case, here I was the head of the cardiovascular program, imaging program. I was on the board of governors for American College of Cardiology for the steering committee, the Heart Association, Society of Cardiac CT, Cardiac MR. I had started two medical device companies. And most importantly, I was like in the thick of it,

saving patients' lives. I was on call as a cardiologist. When patients had a cardiac arrest, I was like in the thick of it, saving patients' lives. I was on call as a cardiologist. When patients had a cardiac arrest, I would get a call. And there's nothing, nothing more satisfying than saving someone's life. And absolutely nothing more satisfying than someone's, saving someone's life and resuscitating them and everybody had given up on them and declared them dead. Like I was, that was, that was the zone I was living in. And I loved it. But it also became this,

like I said, a whisper that started becoming louder and louder. Like, if there was a moonshot, a moonshot that we had never attempted because we just did not know how to, and if it was possible, that was the one that was worthy of taking. And I was incredibly fortunate to have my wife and kids said, why are you not doing it? Yeah. So, then what is the path from that moment forward to creating a company? It was really windy. And I still was thinking, let me start a basic science lab first and actually see some proof of concept and make it the lab that people can come and work in

and then go and start up their companies. And it became very clear that the longer and longer I spent time in academia, that academia has a very important place in a lot of things that come into the world. But the focus there also was discovery, innovation, writing papers, getting grants. And then there was its own network

of competing for things versus actually going out and creating that change that needed to happen. Because that's when the buck was being passed to somebody else. And here it is, there's no one willing to take that risk. So it was an important moment for me to say, I'm going to have to quit to actually see this idea become real in the world. And it did not come out just automatically like that. My first step was to start a company and write to a venture

capitalist saying, hey, here's the idea. Are you interested? And within an hour of writing the note to them, they were on the phone saying, yeah, please move the company to California. Just like that. I mean, I thought, you know, that's what happened. Did you have a business plan at that point or, I mean, I would say no. A nascent idea? No, it was a nascent idea. It was just literally an email that said, hey, here's the idea. Here's the available research in this space. We think it could be done.

And that was enough for the venture capitalists to get on the phone. And it's called Sean O'Sullivan, IndieBio. And I still distinctly remember driving on Highway 52, going down to Rochester, a clinic for a research collaboration meeting I had, and pulling off on 52 and taking that call. And saying, okay, I'll take a few people there.

I will start the NIDUS of the company there, take a few months off, and I'll come back and practice cardiology. Because that team will be on autopilot, they'll go. And I was not on the incorporation papers of the company. I had no role. And boy, I was wrong. I was wrong because there was literally nobody returning our phone calls.

People would listen to the idea, nod politely, and just say, hey, this is not for me. I have no idea what this is about. And the more and more I started hearing that, because at that point, I had taken time off and realized that when our team was calling the venture capitalists and talking to them, nobody was returning a call. When I would go there, I would get these blank stares from people who were visiting every other company and getting excited about that science, but not ours. And that was a moment where I went back really down to my family and they were like, is this a moment where you should be quitting? And so that's when I wrote my resignation letter.

And in advance of us getting funded, sent the resignation letter in and quit and decided that I will be in California for as long as it takes. And my wife and kids were in Minnesota. I was here all the time. We had a small group of four people, two interns and me and my co-founder. And we decided that we'll make a meatball from cow cells. And that was, and I needed that proof myself that to make meat, I tasted myself

and believed that this is actually meat. That moment happened late in December 2015 when we cooked finally the smallest piece of meat we could grow, like seven grams. And I will never forget the moment I put that in my mouth and bit into it. And having been a meat eater all my life and having stopped for two decades,

every single neuron in my life and stopped and having stopped for two decades, every single neuron in my brain and taste buds and aromas and every, all the five senses, they lit up saying that this is meat. And that gave me the courage to quit and just, you know, not look back. Proof of concept. That was a proof of concept. Yeah. What did that seven ounces of meatball cost at the time? Oh, so the meatball cost about, I think these are estimates.

Like we do not have the exact numbers, but the meatball itself cost about $1,800, which means a pound of it could have been north of $18,000. And that was it. That gave us the ability to say, we put something in front of you. We had a independent taster come and say,

this is beef. And that's when the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. That's the first headline we ever had. And the rest is like the whole industry is born. And now it's a competitive marketplace. You're no longer the only player in this space. We're gonna get to that. But I think this idea of taking that risk

and deciding to embark on this moonshot adventure is kind of an incredible thing to step into the process of redressing what is really this mass delusion that we live under, like this spell that we live under, this blind spot and ethical quandary that operates right under our nose, that by dint of a concerted effort on behalf of government and industry

to obscure what by any definition is an atrocity, factory farming that I'm convinced at some point in the future humanity is gonna regard in hindsight as shameful and baffling. Also a system that has, you know, we have to say has successfully fed billions of people, but has come at a tragic cost, not only to untold billions of sentient animals,

animals that we now know have complex emotional capacities, but also to the environmental wellbeing of the planet. And so with that in mind, like this is the system that you're trying to transcend with a better system. I mean, that is a laudable mission to be on. That is a laudable investment of your life energy and life force.

Because I think as responsible stewards of the planet, we can no longer turn a blind eye to what's going on. We're reaching kind of a breaking point with that. And it almost seems like there's a race now. Are we gonna be able to outpace the damage that we've done and through technological innovation, create a better world? And for you to say, I'm not gonna be this cardiologist

that I spent all these years training for, and I'm gonna do this instead with all the risk that that entails and the many years and toil and all of the obstacles that you faced. I mean, this is a long journey that you're on. Well, I'd say this is one of the most meaningful journeys. I'm unable to think of a better way of spending my life. I'm just, I've tried really hard to say, what else can I do? And when I look at the prospect of what if looking back 30, 40 years from now, look back on my life and say, would you have rather spent time as a cardiologist and saved 2,000 or 3,000 lives? Or would you have rather wanted to be a part of a movement that basically stood up and said,

let's figure out a way to have what we love, but let it not come with this incredible downside of wreaking havoc on the planet, causing unimaginable suffering for hundreds of billions of animals and trillions of animals, and not perpetuating the amount of risk we are taking related to pandemics, zoonotic diseases, the superbugs from antibiotic resistance, and also maybe finding ways to have better jobs

than the ones that have significant occupational risks of getting hurt or killed during work. Like, it just felt like an incredible win. If even I'm a part of a movement that makes that happen in my lifetime or well beyond my lifetime, and if our kids can inherit a world where they're like, boy, are we glad someone challenged the principles here. And every single time the answer came back

is, this is the most risky path, but this is the most worthwhile path. And I'm not going into this naive. I'm going into this knowing that the chances of success on a transformative change like this are infinitesimally small for two reasons. One, the obvious one, it's never been done before. And until it's done, I would never be able to say there's enough people who believe in it. So that's a given. And the second one is this innovation has to happen in the face of established norms,

traditions, cultures, and incumbent industries. And the hope that I have in this is we truly believe that this is a big tent moment for the world. By that, I mean, when we have a big tent, it welcomes the diversity of thought and opinions and choices. And I can see under this tent, people who are hardcore meat eaters, who just love the taste of meat and will never give it up. And I can see under this tent people who will basically, let's say, are completely, like on the other side, they could be vegans or plant-based. And there could be people in the middle who I call are the largest group of people in the world who are the conflicted carnivores, who love to eat meat,

but would rather not think about the process of how meat comes to the table, because we love the product, don't love the process. And truly, I think cultivated meat gives something for everyone. The choice of eating real meat, the choice of not hurting the animals or the planet, and the incredible beauty of preserving the choice. And I think it's not easy, but if there is hope for it, I am running towards that hope. And fortunately, I have a few people I can look back and say, there is a team of 200 plus people running with me on our team saying that we are in the arena. We are the ones that are trying to make this happen every single day, despite all of the punches and the skeptics. But I don't see any other path to getting to the other side.

So I think that's going to be the journey of transformation. And it's not unique to us. It's going to be what people have done in the past and lived through it and faced incredible amount of skepticism. And I'll give you examples in medicine. Penicillin, polio vaccine. In the early days of penicillin and polio vaccine, there were an incredible amount of skeptics because there were delays. There were some people who got polio because of the vaccine. But we didn't give up. And here we are. We've nearly eradicated polio across the world.

And penicillin has been saving billions of lives. Now, that's kind of what I think the anchor here is. and penicillin has been saving billions of lives. Now that's kind of what I think the anchor here is. And that's the frame in which I would want to be thinking about this. Any change to the paradigm, any kind of new thing that has never existed before is gonna be met with resistance in the current moment.

Everything from germ theory to the planet orbiting around the sun. So that's not surprising. And it's always interesting to look back and look at those case studies and realize that the people who are making the change have to think not about what the current moment is saying about what they're doing, but what, you know, the next generation or the

next century is going to think or reflect upon that kind of change. And that's a hard mind space to inhabit. Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying this is easy. It has not been easy on me, has not been easy on my team, has not been easy on my family. And the ray of hope that is keeping us going is we now have a track record of having done things people said were impossible to do. You know, when we started out in 2015 and 2016, the skeptics were challenging the science and saying the science is never going to work. Then the culinaries were challenging and saying it's never going to taste good. Then the policymakers and people who knew how hard regulation was were saying it's never going to get regulatory approval. Guess what? All of those are behind us.

And half of our lifetime as a company and an industry has been spent during COVID. And who predicted a global pandemic when we started it? And we had our aspirations and goals and saying, we think all of these things are possible. Now, they have been possible, and we've had some delays in timelines. We would have wanted to be on market earlier, but we came on market maybe 12 to 18 months later

than what we wanted to be. But in the face of a global pandemic and in the face of incredible challenges that we've had in general for a world that's become so polarized in just my lifetime, I feel like this is a huge win. I mean, this is not even a small win. This is a huge win that cultivated meat exists in the world and has moved from science fiction to reality. So, I'd say the first chapter is done. The success is not guaranteed. There is multiple chapters to be written. In the next chapter, I think we need to make cultivated meat available to a lot more people than the small scale at which it's available. And that is the laser focus of our team. And I have more conviction now than when we started the journey in 2015 or team. And I have more conviction now

than when we started the journey in 2015 or 16, because I've seen what the single-minded purpose of a team can get us to do. And I also have seen that when there is no precedent, it is up to the pioneers to build precedent. And that is going to come with incredible amount of heartache and incredible amount of resilience. And there's a lot more experience behind us now.

Yeah, it's very different now than it was even a handful of years ago. So in terms of just the mechanics of this, essentially what you're doing is you're taking a biopsy of an animal, extracting a cell line, and then cultivating those cells in what is ostensibly like a vat, like a brewing process, correct?

And there's two factors at play here. There's the tissue production piece, and then there's the suspension production. Like you have to create a lattice work for this to actually kind of cohere or create the visual appeal and the texture that a meat would have. Is that accurate? Yeah, I mean, it is accurate. And it's also, you're going into a depth, which basically tells me you're well right into this field, but most people will not be coming into it with that level of depth of tissue and suspension. But what I'd say is the following. The proof is in the tasting.

And you'll get to taste both of the products today, and you can tell me how you feel about the suspension product and the tissue product. And here's the reason why. Because the suspension products we're making, which are going to be coming to market in the next generation of a release, are at least a thousand times more scalable and a thousand times cheaper than where tissue products can get us there right now. Which then tells me, if we have to access a much larger market that is going to define us based on taste, suspension is the one that is in the near term the solution. And then what tissue will add as we talk about more complex products of complex steaks and

marbling and all of that into the premium products, tissue is going to add that. And we are developing both those technologies. And the first product we have on the market is a tissue product. We are developing both those technologies. And the first product we have on the market is a tissue product. And we chose that with a specific intention to show what the North Star is and that doing the hard things first of developing a full tissue product is going to teach us a lot more about taste and what parts of it we should go to scale quickly with. And that is the journey of us at Upside, where we learned a lot making the first full chicken breast,

chicken fillet product. And all of it is chicken tissue. It makes its own lattices. It makes its own what we call scaffolds. And the cells there are incorporating every feature and flavor of what it is to make it into the full chicken breast-like product. When we took out and broke that apart and we realized there were some very specific learnings that let us get to a very

similar tasting product with nutrition that is on par with what we have with conventional meat products, but can be done much faster. And you'll also taste those products. And we're looking to get regulatory approval for the second set of products to get to market in the very near future. And when I talk about getting ready for the next chapter, that is how we want to show proof of scale. Well, should we do a testing? We should. Absolutely. Let's do it. This is a good moment to take a break and see what we're dealing with. I have a question to ask before we take a break. Sure. What would you pay for a plate of chicken that you feel like I can get behind this because it did not have to, you know,

cause the downsides that I'm against in the world. And if I just, I'm gonna push this in front of you. This is, let's say this is a menu for you. This is the menu, all right. It says menu, upside chicken filet, pan seared with a vegan white wine butter sauce, charred scallions and tomatoes, and scallion oil garnish. And then the upside shredded chicken,

lettuce cups with seared chicken, sauteed vegetables, miso glazedzed and cilantro garnish. Sounds wonderful. I don't know that I'm the right person to ask that question. I've been vegan for 17 years. So I'm not necessarily in the market to buy chicken and to consume chicken. I think that question is better put to a traditional omnivore.

I'm curious about your thoughts. Like I'm going to taste your product, but this is very much out of my wheelhouse, so to say. It's been quite a long time since I've tasted chicken. Oh, how long? 17 years. Wow. Yeah, I've been plant-based for a long time.

Okay. So this is gonna be an interesting experience, I guess I would say. Well, I'm imagining this is your first of a kind experience on the show. And maybe, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the response is to this. I'm sure it will be controversial, right?

I imagine. I'm not somebody who, like I, you know, I gave up meat and dairy a long time ago. I wasn't somebody who did it initially for ethical considerations, but that has since become a primary thing for me. And I would say I'd be disingenuous if I didn't crave meat products from time to time.

But it's been so long that I rarely think about it anymore. So from an ethical perspective, I don't have a quandary tasting any of these things. It'll be strange to see what my taste buds do. That'll be interesting. So maybe I'll ask you the question afterwards and give it some thought. taste buds do? That would be interesting. So, maybe I'll ask you the question afterwards. Okay. And give it some thought. But I think asking an omnivore is what we're actually doing. Because we know that people who have stopped eating meat are not our primary market. We know that people

that are in the big zone of being a conflicted carnivore where they love eating meat but want potentially a better way of it coming to the table are the initial markets. So we're doing a lot of studies on this. So that's where this question came from. And there is a place for the ethical vegan. If the reason for giving up meat is purely ethics and you have removed the ethical dilemma from that decision tree,

then it opens up the possibility for the ethical vegan to embrace this because there is no suffering involved. Yeah, that is something that will be very important. I think as we advance in getting our next generation products, it's very clear to us that the only thing that is animal there is the animal cell. In the process, everything the animal cell is eating, we are gradually eliminating anything that requires an animal to be raised and provide that input to us. So in the second generation of products, the only thing we have is animal cell. And all of the products we're using to feed the animal cell are natural products and products

that are commonly used in food that the animal cell is also consuming. So we think that that is when this real ethical dilemma for vegans will actually crop up. And if people became vegan because of animal welfare issues or animal cruelty issues or environmental issues, they will be able to say, what if that is not an issue anymore? Would I want to taste the product? And I think that's incredible. Well, let's check it out. All right, let's do it. Cool.

I mean, first of all, I mean, beautiful, thank you. It's wonderful that you came and prepared this. And the smell is indistinguishable from chicken. I can tell you that right off the bat, like just going over there while it was simmering. I'm like, oh my Lord, it's crazy, right? This is a big moment, Uma. It is right.

I haven't had chicken in 17 years, so. Well, I mean, we are giving it to you. This is naked chicken, right? You're seeing it's fully exposed and feel free to play with your hands, pull it apart, all the shreds. I mean, if you, yeah seeing it's fully exposed and feel free to play with your hands, pull it apart, all the shreds. I mean, if you, yeah, it's like the striation in it. I mean, it looks exactly like chicken.

That's wild. Wow. I couldn't tell the difference. I mean, granted it's been a long time since I've had it. It's not like I had chicken yesterday so I could compare it but there's nothing about it that feels any different than any chicken that I've ever had. That's really quite something.

Trying to wrap my head around it. All right, I'm gonna eat the lettuce cup. Here, you should be having some of this too. I think I probably eat the most cultivated chicken in the world. You probably have, right? Has anybody eaten more cultivated chicken than you? I would challenge that nobody has eaten more than me, my wife, my kids, and my dog.

So it's been amazing to have that for us. Unbelievable. Wow, so that chicken you're tasting now is not on the market yet. Right. That is a thousand times more scalable. This is the next generation. And this is what we've been relentlessly working on for the last year and a half since we opened our production facility in Emeryville called Epic. And if you visit Epic, you'll see very large cultivators that you've been talking about,

like the wax you described, the 2000 liters and 200 liters and much, much larger ones than what the tissue was made out of. And the beauty of that is we're able to make tons of it now. And the amount of product we have is so much in terms of our testing capabilities and supply capabilities. It's more scalable. Why? Because of the facility that you've built? Or is there something about this next generation product that makes it more scalable by its nature?

Yeah, two things. It's much simpler production process, faster production process. And it also allows us to be able to add some texture with ingredients that we can get from plant-based so that we can get some texture added out of it. If we can't get the full texture, we can easily pick up the piece of texture that we want and include in there. It improves the nutritionals.

It gives us the ability to say taste is king. And the next thing is price is a really important practical attribute. We can put price on this significantly lower than the tissue product. But the only reason we knew how to make that is because we made the tissue product from the ground up. Right. Right.

So what is one lettuce cup cost right now currently? Oh, I think this is about a pound of chicken. It looks like there's about 10 shredded pieces in this cup. I say this is about a pound of chicken and I don't have the exact price, so don't quote me on it, but I'd say this is our target of what we're trying to do is to be somewhere in the realm of little more expensive than organic chicken. And that's the target of what we're trying to do is to be somewhere in the realm of little more expensive than organic chicken.

And that's the target of what we're going after. And we come into the market, that's what we're going to be putting at in the range of $10, $20 for a pound. But if I look at the price of chicken on the menu right now, if I go, I just came from the Burbank airport, there was a chicken sandwich. It was $16.

Yeah, that's airport pricing too. And then if I go into Shake Shack, that is not airport. It's in the range of 10, $12 per sandwich. So I think what we're trying to target is trying to get to those levels where you then have a choice to say, do I want upside chicken? do I want, you know, a chicken that comes from, let's say,

a vertical factory farm? That's what that product can do. And what is the time horizon on that? I mean, you have FDA approval of this product here, right? It was like June of 2023. You got the green light from them. And that opened up all kinds of possibilities. This next generation product, you have to now submit that to FDA, correct?

We have already submitted. We're waiting for approvals. That product has been on the market now for coming on eight months, nine months. We've been selling it. We are the only company in the world that's been selling cultivated meat nonstop. And the idea is to sell in places where people can recognize what it is and taste it, and then say, I am ready for placing an order. And I think we are just, I think we are filling up the order book

that we need for getting the next generation products on the market. All right, so now I'm tasting the one that is approved, the chicken filet. The taste is great, but there is a texture difference. Obviously, it feels more like a patty than actual chicken muscle fiber that you would have if you were eating chicken from a live animal.

Yeah, the improvement is what we've learned from it. The flavors have been transferred. The texture on the product that we've released on the market is the most tender chicken you can get. So it's a softer texture, more tender than what you would get in the grocery store. And when we had tasters come in from, let's say, a James Beard award-winning chef who went in a stealth

mode and tasted in the restaurant. The reviews we got on that was, it is the most chickeny chicken I've ever tasted. And it evokes me of the nostalgia of what chicken used to taste like in the 1960s and 70s, where the heritage chickens had those flavor, fully flavorful, and that it's not the dry chicken that you get from a grocery store. So what we used from that was the best parts of it. Like, how do you have the moistness and the tenderness transfer over?

Add a little bit more texture because in American palate, there's a requirement for more bite than the tenderness. So we looked at that and transferred that into the next generation of products. And we're also trying to say, how can this become nutritionally even more stronger than the first product? So the second products will have lower fat, lower cholesterol, and also a higher amount of protein. So there's a lot of things that we're also transitioning into nutritional. So I'm really excited about getting this next generation products on the market.

So you mentioned that you started, your first prototype was this meatball. You're now heavily focused on chicken. Is there something inherent about chicken? Why is chicken the focus? Because you could be doing anything. You could be doing antelope or elk or whale or, you know, any animal, right? You could be cultivating. Yeah, we could. Because the science is the same. The science would be the same. We just said, look, we are trying to create transformative change without asking people for transformative change,

which means I'm not asking for behavior change. We are not asking for behavior change. We are saying people love to eat meat. So what are the most consumed meats in the world? Chicken, pork, and beef. So we've always been very clear about the first products that we'll release are going to be chicken, beef, and pork in some combination. And we started working on all of these cells. And we said, let's not try to pick one because we want to do beef.

Let's pick the one that is closest to getting to commercial. Let's pick the ones that are performing the best. Let's pick the ones that we feel are the easiest to get into the market. And chicken won in that race. So that's why we have chicken as the first product. Beef is a close second. So in the next iteration of products that we're going to be bringing, it'll be beef. And if I just look about two different things of impact,

let's just take today, for example, April 23rd, 2024. There will be a million cows that would have been sent for slaughter today, 4 million pigs, and 200 million chickens. So when you think about impact on animals, chicken by far, 200 times more than cows. When we think about our next product, we think about what if a beef product can come on the table? The impact on that would be predominantly related to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that'll come out of it. So, one has taste in animal welfare, the other one has taste and environment. We felt like those would be the first two products we want to bring out.

But we are working on duck. We've done tastings of duck. We are working on crustaceans, things like lobster. We have a few favorite seafood, things like salmon that people have asked us. So we have in the R&D that we're doing, we are working on some of those cell lines. And I think in the future,

we'll see products like that coming from upside. But we're also encouraging a lot of other companies in this space saying, this is a big market. It's a $2 trillion market. And it can't be just one player in this. There could be thousands of companies. There's room for many. And there are increasingly more and more players,

but I think the more players that you see, that makes change all the more inevitable over time, right? The amount of collective pressure that then is exerted on the powers that be and the regulatory gatekeepers, et cetera, it makes the path forward seem much more viable. Yeah. And the fact that so much investment money,

I mean, were you the first company to go out and raise and plant a flag? But there's now like lots, you know, what's happening in Singapore and Israel and Australia. I mean, how many companies are there right now? There are a hundred plus companies now. We were the first company to say we are laser focused on bringing cultivated meat to the world. And we started off as Memphis Meats in 2015. Why did you change the name? That's a great question.

I think when we started recognizing that this has become more of a movement across the world, one of the first questions we kept getting asked is, why Memphis? And we spent more time explaining why we picked the name Memphis versus actually telegraphing our intent of what we're trying to do. And our intent is to bring upside to food production,

meat production. And we wanted to have a global name that can be telegraphed quickly. And the intention behind it is that it's a symbol is a heart. It speaks to mission. It's a company with heart trying to do the things that we believe matter in the world. And the idea of talking about upsides of food production

was more important to us than talking about downsides. So therefore we wanted to telegraph that and switch the name from Memphis Meats to Upside. So right now we have occasional tastings that you're doing in San Francisco, right? Is it Bar Creme? So we have done tastings in Bar Creme continuously for seven months

and we've sold in California. And what we've done is we've had a number of diners come through and had the experience. Now we wanted to take it on the road. So we said, the next seven months or 12 months is about taking the chicken on the road. So we took our chicken to New York and sold it in New York in February. And in March, we took it to Texas and sold in Texas, around South by Southwest. And then we have a few more events planned

in many areas of the country. And the idea is we'd like to be able to get to sale in most states in the United States before the next set of regulatory approvals come. So we can show people what's possible. And then we are also starting to show this is what's coming next. And our laser focus is to be in the 50 United States.

By when? Are you out of the time prediction business at this point? I'd say all of that, to be able to sell in the 50 US states with the next set of scalable products, I would say, look, I would venture out and say, we want to be able to accomplish that in the next two years. Wow. So the next two years. Wow. So the next chapter is a five-year chapter in my mind.

In this five-year chapter, there will be a definitive proof of scale being done, showing that under one roof, people can produce millions of pounds of meat. And that millions of pounds will start showing a pathway to a profitable business. And that's really what our liaison focus is on. And while we do that and start producing these millions of pounds, we want to be able to sell it in the 50 United States.

Right. And it will come at a certain price point, but with scale and over time. I mean, all of the resources that you've raised have gone into the science, the R&D, but also into building a facility that makes room for that scalability because it is only through scale that you're ever gonna approximate price parity. And price parity is really the game in terms of making progress in this world. Yeah, I think ultimately there is a path

to getting to price parity and we can't try to step down multiple levels without being able to sustain that price. And the idea is to show that as we get to scale and we show that the end-to-end production can be seen by someone, tasted by someone, and they can then get deep into saying, will this be ultimately a more profitable business than investing in more feedlots or slaughterhouses or typical way of how we get meat to the table? Will it be less expensive, not just for direct costs, but the externalized costs of the environmental impact? I think we just need to show some data points for this. And infrastructure investments in this are significant. And so far, the investment in this field has been tiny, tiny, tiny compared to major change that we've witnessed in other industries.

In the last eight years, a total of $2.7 or $8 billion has gone into this industry, directly into companies like ours, and companies that are supporting companies like ours. That's not even the cost of a single battery plant to make an electric vehicle. And when we're thinking about the scale of the industry, it's a two trillion dollar industry every year, and that industry size is doubling. And this investment is so tiny. In order for us to become real in the world, there has to be significant public-private partnerships, significant ability of governments to say, hey, this is worth living in this world. This innovation is a must-have. And let's not try to make it harder, but let's try to figure out how,

just like innovations like refrigeration, just like innovations like manufacturing of antibiotics, manufacturing of electric vehicles, all of these things have been supported. I think the next big transition is supporting the food transition. And that's what we are trying to provide data points for. We want a lot of companies in this space to be successful because the ecosystem will then thrive.

And we want lots of people choosing to go into this field, which has already started happening, by the way. The major food and ag universities have undergrad and postgrad programs in the space. And thanks to nonprofits like Good Food Institute, I think they're singularly ahead of everybody in this field in order to get visibility of the promise of doing science and research, collaboration between academia, between governments and industries, and bringing people

to solve problems which previously were just deemed by experts are not solvable. I'd say this industry would not be here if not for Good Food Institute, literally saying, this is worth investing your time into. And I wish a lot of other nonprofits also join them in a very collaborative space because we need that. We have universities like UC Davis, UCLA, Tufts, and a number of other universities in the US. This is talent building. And as we are starting to build this industry, in parallel, talent has

to build. In parallel, the governments have to get involved. And it needs to continue to appeal to the big tent, people on the left, people on the right, people in the middle. And I feel like it's positioned well. There are some challenges that we have in terms of communicating this really well, trying to make sure that the balance between incredible amount of hope and hype is it's always a very delicate line to walk because when you're in the arena,

you see incredibly hopeful things. And then you also see struggles, but to communicate all of that at the same time, live when it's happening, because we're trying to be transparent is a super significant challenge and I don't want to underestimate it. But the only way to make progress

is to start setting ourselves goals and say, I'm not gonna lose sight of my North Star for this next scale, next chapter of scale, the chapter after that is cost, the chapter after that is health. So we're just kind of breaking it down in those segments and trying to march forward. Your critics have been quite vocal about the fact

that this is never gonna happen. This is a pipe dream. I had Pat Brown from Impossible Foods on this podcast say, forget about, it was called lab-grown meat then. It's never gonna happen. He was saying, this is just a pipe dream. on this podcast say, forget about, it was called lab-grown meat then, it's never gonna happen. He was saying, this is just a pipe dream, it's fool's errand.

There certainly have been articles written critical of this mission that you're on, yet at the same time, you cannot deny the viability. I mean, I just tasted it, it's a real thing. It's unbelievable the way it tastes. It exists in the world. There are plenty of companies out doing this. There is a lot of money pouring into this space,

perhaps just a teardrop compared to other areas. But we are seeing that collaboration amongst competitors to put pressure on government entities in the form of the FDA approval in 2023. That opens the door to future approvals, the cooperation with Good Food Institute and the role that that organization is playing as sort of a semi-lobbying arm, I suppose, on some level, but also an educational arm to help government and industry and the financial sector understand what is happening right now. On some level, it feels like an inevitability, and it's got to feel very validating and exciting

for you as the early mover in this space to actually start seeing these changes. But I brought up Bar Creme and this sort of roadshow that you've been on with tastings, tastings just to kind of underscore the fact that, short of that or going to Singapore and enjoying Josh Tetrick's, eat just fair in one restaurant there, this is not accessible to the public yet.

There is still a long road before this is gonna be, on people's plates in average homes across the world. There still is a long way to go. So I guess the question I have is, why is this problem so hard? Why is the degree of difficulty so challenging, this path towards price parity and scale and availability? Yeah, first of all, I want to point out that the skeptics and the critics and the statements you

talked about, what Pat Brown said on the show maybe, are some of the kindest words that we hear. There are even worse critiques and even worse skeptics. And one of the things I tell my team is, I have been waking up to criticism every single morning and going to bed with more criticism and skepticism every single night for the last eight years. And that's a lot. That's, I mean, how do you manage that? I think this is the proof in front of you, right? This is like you say, proof is in the pudding,

the proof's in the chicken in front of you. These are things that people were saying virtually impossible to do. And here it is the proof in front of you, right? This is like you say, proof is in the pudding, the proof's in the chicken in front of you. Like these are things that people were saying virtually impossible to do. And here it is sitting right in front, a physical thing. This is not software. This is literally things that we've made with our own hands, blood, sweat, and tears against all skeptics.

Like, okay, now when you have something behind you on that as a track record, like that I'm putting in front of you, it gives me and my team an enormous amount of hope that is real. And we feel like that is the only way to make progress. And it solves this incredible dilemma of, will anybody ever care about it? Because now there are people wanting to buy it, and they're willing to pay a significant amount of premium. Another validating thing.

And we know that, okay, what's the next thing the skeptics are saying is not possible? It is like, you'll never scale. I'm like, okay, all right, challenge accepted. That's what we're going to go after, right? So that's about the skeptics. You know, if we really, you know, want to think about why is this so hard to do, right? That's

the question you're asking. It's because this is not a quick remodel. This is literally building things from the ground up, taking the building blocks of food and saying, I'm going to take the animal cells. I'm going to feed them what they love to eat. I'm going to let nature, which is what the cell by itself is programmed to do, because every animal cell has its own program already written. They grow, they grow, and they grow, and they accumulate the fats and the proteins and the aromas. And then there's the nurturing of those cells in a very safe environment. Trying to build the nature and the nurture around it and the building blocks to make a product we fall in love with involves a lot of scientific, technical, engineering, funding, communication, things that need to come together.

And because we've also elected to be transparent while doing this, it creates a level of interest, anticipation, and also at the same time, oh, I can't get it. And I don't know of a better way to bring an innovation like this into the world unless conversations start very early, even before people can access it. Let's say in my hometown in India, where I grew up. It might take 10 years to get there, but people have to start socializing this idea that, hey, this is coming because this is a cultural change. It's not something that can just be like an iPhone that's released and you get the next model upgrade.

This is literally a cultural change. It's going to take time. And I think there is no shortcuts here. We just have to be able to say, there'll be good days, there'll be good months, there'll be good years. But this is something that for us to live in the world, it's going to require, you know, patience and persistence and funding. I mean, that's it.

One of the battles that you have to wage is getting people's heads around just the idea of eating an animal product that didn't come from an animal. And despite the fact that I know all too well the ills of animal agriculture, the ways in which antibiotics are used and the fecal matter in which these animals sort of live and breathe.

It's an ethical disaster that presents risks to human health through consumption and also to the residents who are proximate to these slaughterhouses. There's environmental degradation, soil depletion, and yet the system is sort of entrenched, right? And this is just the way that things are. And then it's propped up and subsidized by the government

to deflate the prices and make it all the more accessible. While it's the least transparent industry that we have, it's shrouded in privacy and secrecy, the way that these things operate. I know all of this, and I couldn't be more excited about a better way forward that is transparent and healthier and everything. And yet at the same time, I still have this human default

where I'm like, what is this science experiment that I'm eating right now? Is this safe? Is this healthy? And despite everything you've told me, that thought still sort of lingers in my mind. So talk a little bit about that issue and how you hope to overcome that and win the hearts and minds of people. It's going to take time. I think there's no shortcut here. I think it's going to take time. And I think it's okay for people to take

the time to join this because this has never existed in the world. And we as humans have always wanted comfort in the choices we make. And that happens when someone takes a one step forward and somebody else follows them and somebody else follows them and slowly a crowd starts building and that crowd starts becoming a larger crowd and the larger crowd becomes even larger. And for the type of innovation we are talking about with basically bringing meat to the table without slaughter

and without environmental downsides. As our ability to scale and lower price comes forward, the crowd could get larger and larger and larger. And so, that way, we can actually meet the demand with the amount of supply that we can make. Not just us, but the whole industry. So, I think that's actually good. The part that's important is tasting is believing, tasting is magical. And before people taste it, there's a certain level of ick factor

or there's a certain level of fear, there's a certain level of things or expectations that just get demystified, just like it happened to you, right? They're like, oh, it tastes like chicken. But you would not believe it until you taste it.

So that's one step. It's got to be a step. The second one is coming and seeing how the production, how is it made? So as production facilities like breweries are in your backyard and you start walking and seeing it, let's say you're walking a dog, getting coffee,

then you go and say, hey, this is where meat's made. And literally everything is being made in front of you with glass walls. And you can look through it. Then that's a second magical moment. The third one is having somebody that you know and trust vouch for it and say, this is good. I think those three need to happen. And then people will have to opt in on their own at their own comfort level. And here's the beauty of it. No one is mandating that you eat this. No one is enforcing it. It's a choice that's in the world.

And when we put a choice like this in the world, I firmly believe that there will be enough people who will opt in and say, this is more aligned with my values, what I consider natural, than what we currently take for granted. And what we currently take for granted, we love to think and romanticize it as being natural. But there is nothing natural about a chicken that is literally weighing five to six times larger than what it used to weigh 50 years ago because of how it's been raised. There is nothing natural about forced slaughter. I mean, in the time that we finish this podcast, right, there will be about 20 to 30 million chickens that met unnatural death.

There is nothing natural about that in the way it's raised, in the way it's killed at one hundredth of its lifetime. I think people will have to start questioning it from a cultural perspective. And what we're trying to say is, this is all okay because it's a transformative change. It's not disruptive. It's not coming overnight and changing businesses or taking people's livelihoods away. The demand for meat has continued to grow and grow and grow despite all of the challenges. And in the next 30 years, it's doubling. And the value for cultivated meat and plant-based products is, if we can fill the delta of doubling of the demand

and not ask our farmers to raise another 100 billion more animals, but start transitioning the production into, what if instead of raising 10,000 head of cattle or 10 million chickens a year, what if I have 10 cultivators that can grow the same amount and I'll start investing in that and transitioning my family business into that? That's the opportunity I think that's going to have to get people to start saying, this is actually better for me, better for my community, better for my family, and better for business. And I think these things will need to happen over time. It's a choice. You can have this meat or this meat or this meat. We're telling you how it's made. We're showing you the nutritionals.

You literally can come and audit every part of the ingredient that is going in there, which is not possible in the current way animals are raised because our cells are growing in two weeks. And we know every single thing the cell is eating. We can trace it back to where it's being made, where the ingredient, that level of transparency is unprecedented. But you have a choice. No one's mandating it. And I think just giving it time is the most important thing that we can do and the industry can do. I think that's an important distinction to make because there is this perception or this idea that we're headed towards a dystopic future in which we're gonna be forced to eat bugs and lab grown.

You see this discourse around like this idea, right? And the truth is that nobody is forcing you to do this. This is going to be a new option. And there are so many reasons why this is a more ethical and sustainable choice to make, but that choice is not being foisted upon anyone, I guess is what you're trying to say, right? Can you talk a little bit about,

or get specific on how and why it's better from like a percentage or a statistical point of view in terms of like land use, resources, local economy boost. There's also a food security and diversification, like a national security issue at play here as well. There's a lot of threads to pull when you really start to parse the various benefits

of pursuing this as opposed to the current status quo. Yeah, look, I think let's just look at a couple of stats. Right, 15% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world come from raising animals for food. A third of all the the world come from raising animals for food. A third of all the fresh water is used for raising animals for food. And these are statistics that are out there by multiple organizations that have been vetting this.

But that is today's meat production. And we also know that the meat production is going to double and the demand is doubling in the next 30 something years, which then means two thirds of all our fresh water should go towards raising animals for food. And the greenhouse gas emission percentage will go up significantly from 15 percent to wherever it will go, much beyond that. That is not even counting for the stats of how many animals are raised for food. So there's about 70 to 100 billion animals that are raised for food right now. This is meat. We're not talking about seafood. Just imagine doubling that, right? I mean, these are stats that are so large that as a human, I think our brain shuts down. I just don't want to think about it. I want to look at the beautiful

plate in front of me and how it comes to me. When I think about national security, every country wants to be self-sufficient in feeding its own population. And some of it is possible, some of it's not possible because not every country can grow all the animals. But they could probably, in a much easier way, get the crops that feed the animal cells because they're more transportable, that's easy to have access to, and do it with significantly lower resources. For instance, Good Food Institute released a study that literally went and looked at, at scale, when cultivated meat is being produced, what would that impact be? at scale when cultivated meat is being produced, what would that impact be?

The impact is as follows, 90% less water, 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, and no use of antibiotics. Because right now 70 to 80% of all antibiotics we make is given to animals. That means we are not increasing the likelihood of superbug formation. When we look at statistics on food poisoning, just in the United States, 48 million people get food poisoning every year.

Among that, 3,000 people die every year. And those statistics are not changing very much. And a lot of these are traced back to raising animals for food and where that runoff is going or where the contamination sources from, whether it's E. coli or salmonella. And there's a lot of other statistics we can keep going into, for instance, bird flu, right? The one that's been in Texas where it switched from an animal and trying to get into the cattle. Bugs can jump from an animal to another animal. And when animals are raised in such close conditions, the risk is increased exponentially.

And to me, we are taking the risk of a ticking time bomb every single day. The more and more of those conditions we are willing to accept and say we will be somehow immune to the next pandemic. I think that reality is gone. And I think we're living in a new reality. And in order for us to say food safety, food security, choice, and things that fundamentally as humans we care about. Like, I want delicious food, but I don't want to hurt an animal. I don't want to hurt the environment.

This one offers a big 10 solution. So the existing incumbents can transition to it gradually over decades without any risk to their current business. Governments can start planning for the next 50 years and 100 years, starting to say, innovation like this should exist, and we should start developing a talent and workforce towards it. Because the same talent that is doing this is also going to be useful for medicines. It's also going to be useful for biology. It's going to create a lot of other knowledge jobs.

a lot of other knowledge jobs. And in parallel to artificial intelligence growing, the possibilities here to make products better are significantly more with us understanding biology versus saying, I'm going to wait seven years in an animal to have a selective trade bred in, where you can do the same thing in, let's say, seven days. So I think the speed and urgency with which we can solve problems that come our way improves very remarkably.

Right. Not to mention getting to a situation in which suddenly there's the opportunity to repurpose land that has traditionally been used for grazing or raising crops for animals with the capacity to regenerate the soil and do something different with that land. Assuming you can successfully transition the land owner into some different version of a career. I mean, that's some of the pushback I'm sure you get, like what are we gonna do with the farmers?

And you can say, well, we're gonna transition them into being cultivated meat farmers, but not everybody's gonna do that. And even if they do, suddenly they're sitting on more land than they need for that purpose. So this is why the big tent is important, that there'll be multiple production methods

that will need to field a growing world. Cultivated meat is going to be one of it. Regenerative agriculture will be another one. Plant-based is going to be one of it. Regenerative agriculture will be another one. Plant-based is going to be another one. And a combination of all of these hybrid products will be another one. I do think it's an important one. This is where food security, food safety also comes into play, that we need to have multiple tools available for us to be able to say, no matter what is thrown at us, one of them can scale up. And I think when you talk about regenerative agriculture, there are some benefits to it, which is when done well in a small scale,

you could be able to sustain maybe not the amount of meat production we have, but maybe one-tenth or one-hundredth of what we have right now by following that path. But ultimately, it's going to lead to a path of rationing or significant price that most people will not be able to pay. So I do think it's important to have the option of doing that. And as the land opens up, you can have more animals to be reared in the regenerative agriculture format. But it still doesn't address some of the things we've talked about. The environmental impact will still be there, and the animal welfare impact will still be there. The risk of pandemics or

zoonotic diseases has decreased, but it's still there. And we are going to have to accept that all of this is done in service of feeding us what we love. And if we have ways of feeding us that we love that is not just that, then we're all much better off as a species. And I think ultimately, those are the first principle thinkings that government should start doing.

And I'm thankful that, for two things, I'm very thankful that the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and FDA have seen the value of this innovation, have affirmed the safety of the products, and very clearly said this should exist in the world because they are the flagship regulatory agencies in the world and countries are going to look at them. The second thing is I'm very grateful for the investors who took this incredible bet on us and the industry coming from nowhere and saying that, yeah, this should exist in the world. These are not investors who are looking for a quick buck to make. They all know that this is very risky. This is going to take a long time for them to even see any of this back.

But they believe that this is the kind of innovation that should exist in the world. Because if they want a return, they can go and invest in 100 different sectors that will give them the return they want on a timeline with a higher guarantee. But they chose to put their dollars here, which tells you this is much more than a return on investment. This is an important step for humanity to be able to say our species will have a better chance of being able to check off the things that we care about. And that's why I'm really grateful for the investors

who have backed this industry. Yes, and the moonshots when they work out are the ones that pay off the best, right? You know, I'm sure they're thinking that as well. These are smart, savvy people. They may have a long time window, but it's the big bets, the crazy ideas that once in a while work out that reap the returns

that those kind of venture capitalists live for. Yes, and then look, thank God we have people that are willing to do that. Otherwise we would not be sitting on many of the innovations that we have. We would still be in, I don't know what to call it, we'll still be in the Stone Age. And thank God for all of the inventions and innovations

that were supported by whether it's the government or whether it's private sector, we are here because of that. And I am certainly not going to sit and demonize these people that are saying, go, go, go, go, do this. No, it's great. It's given birth to this entire idea, which is amazing. You mentioned regenerative agriculture

and the many benefits of this kind of ascendant movement. But I also think that there's a sort of reductive binary discourse right now, an either or argument when it comes to the regenerative movement versus what you're doing. The regenerative movement is all about naturalism, getting back to the land. The solution to our environmental problems and our ethical dilemmas can be found in returning to this,

for lack of a better phrase, like agrarian soil-based sensibility. Whereas what you're doing is microscopes and slides and scary people in lab coats who are crafting science experiments that are gonna change our genetic framework and turn us into some kind of different type of organism than a human being, right?

Like this is the kind of conversation that's happening right now. And as great as the regenerative movement is, to me, and I'm curious about your thoughts about this, the statistics just don't bear out that this model is going to be viable to feed the planet. It is an option, just like what you're doing will become an option.

But in terms of solving the big problem of how do we feed the planet in a viable price parity type of way, it doesn't seem to me that the numbers bear out. I have not looked at the latest statistics from regenerative, but I've looked at the principles of it when people were repeatedly asking me about regenerative. So, my takeaways are the following, and please correct me, which is regenerative has a place, but it is a really small space in being able to feed the world that there is just no way that we have enough land to be able to say we could have, you know, the amount of per capita consumption of meat in the U.S.

is 230 pounds per person of meat. That's how much Americans are eating right now. In India, it's about one-tenth of that. But we also know that the first extra dollar a family has, that parent is going to go and buy meat for their kids. So if India is going to continue to grow on the projected trajectory and reaches the American demand of meat, that is a tenfold increase. And there is just no way that I can think of regenerative agriculture being able to meet all

of that because there's just not enough land in the world to do that. And the amount of time it takes to raise an animal, it takes two years for a beef to go to slaughter, for cow to go to slaughter, nine months for a pig, and two months for a chicken. We can't shorten that. Which is why I think if you're thinking about a very large scale transformation, I think cultivated meat has the ability to say, I could fill 30, 40, 50, 60, 70% of the world's meat need as we scale. And now that's a multi-decade process. There's a lot of risks involved. Will it happen? Will it not happen? But if I look at the first principles and break down cultivated meat, for instance, the chicken lettuce cups that you had, that chicken was grown in five days. The chicken fillet, the chicken breast that

you had, that was grown in two weeks. So when we're thinking about, imagine if we scale up, as we look at scale up, we think that chicken can be grown in three days, right? We are not there yet. But if we are growing it in three days, and if I'm making, like today, there'll be 200 million chickens sent to slaughter. So, that's about 600 million pounds. If I'm making chicken in three days to five days, versus it's taking two months to make that chicken, you can already start seeing, if this technology scales, we're not going to be at a shortage of chicken or meat at all. It'll have to have the human population grow 2, 3, 4x to be even having that conversation. But this is all an if. This has never been done before. I understand the

risks and, you know, it may not be in my lifetime, but we're talking about multiple generations getting behind us. That's why I feel cultivated is on a very different trajectory. With respect to regenerative, space is always going to be an issue and ethics will always be an issue. I don't think you can ever get around the ethics of killing an animal, which is not natural, which is, I think no other technology, if you really are saying, I'm going to put animal cells on the table can get around the ethics issue except for cultivated meat. It is insane that we think that slaughtering an animal that's been injected with antibiotics

and grown artificially fast and overfed in cramped circumstances and then led to its death is a more natural thing than what you're doing. But we do have this default, like, well, I don't know. It's an unknown. You know what I mean? I think that's where the real like education piece comes in. There has to be, as you said, this long time window

of us acclimating to this idea. You know, I've been thinking about the question you asked, how do I get over this feeling in me that, hey, I'm more comfortable eating the meat that's on the table right now? Not this one, but I'm talking about meat that's normal, well, conventional. I would not call it normal at this point, but conventional meat coming to the table. And I think the best analogy I can think of is for a long time, people who thought the world was round got laughed at. And it was just not cool to say that. And people got sent to their death because they said the world was round.

I think this is what we're talking about here. Like, for you to say, hey, there is nothing natural about raising an animal and pumping it full of antibiotics and taking all the risks that come with that process and sending it to an unnatural death. It's such a faraway concept right now because we don't see that side of it ever. We just see the beautiful cooked whatever meat product that's in the center of plate. And there's a huge disconnect. that's in the center of plate. And there's a huge disconnect.

And I think we have done a significant disservice in creating whatever barriers we have created to keep ourselves comfortable. And I think because we are questioning that fundamental premise that that is not natural, we will be asking a lot of people to be a lot more open than the presumptions they've had. So, yeah, you're right. It's going to take time. And I believe that the people that believed the world was round ultimately prevailed. And the people that believe that ethics includes all of

it, I think will ultimately prevail. Are there hidden energy considerations that you're dealing with right now? Some of your critics will say, oh, they paint this picture of sustainability, but it takes a lot of energy to do what you're doing. So I guess there's on some level, an analogy to electric vehicles and kind of what these batteries require

and how they're actually charged and where these minerals come from. So what are some of the ecological or sustainability energy related concerns that you contend with? Yeah, look, I think at this stage right now, we are more energy intensive because we are doing it in very small scale. But when we start looking at

what does it look like to produce a hundred million pounds or a billion pounds of this, all of the benefits of producing meat in a significantly shorter duration add up. And it's an exponential improvement in the advantages that'll stack up. Because like I just said, if you can make chicken in five days versus two months, if I can make beef in five days versus two years, the amount of time I'm feeding these animal cells is so much shorter. And the amount of time I've got to keep the lights on to grow that much is so much shorter. In order to get there, there's a couple of technological things that we need to rely on for first principles. For instance, imagine you have a vertical farm with a million chickens in it. Can you plug all the chickens into an outlet? You can't. But if I have a cultivated meat facility that is making

three million pounds of chicken every year, I can plug the entire thing into an outlet. And that's why I think on the first principle level, the production facilities that we are talking about are more energy intensive now because we're at small scale. As we get to solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, all of this, our production facility can plug into. But you show me a single animal

that you can plug into it, you can't. And that's really why I think the argument is neutral. Health and safety is obviously top of mind for the curious consumer. What do we know about the health and safety of your products? What do we still need to discover or understand?

And kind of help me get my head around the health implications here? Look, here's what we know. We know that we put our entire production process in front of the FDA and the USDA, and they've looked at the entire production process, the ingredients that go into the production process. They have looked at the final product,

the final nutritional information that comes out from the product. And they've looked at everything else that is on the market and deemed our product to be safe and that it should get on the market for sale. And the amount of scrutiny we had to go through for getting a single product out was incredible. Because I don't think this was the same standard that people had in the past when they were getting a food product out. And we got a lot of food products that we've been eating for decades. That if you look back and say, why are we taking that as a gold standard? And my question is, I don't think we should take the existing food products we have on the market as a gold standard and measure against them.

I think we should know exactly where our food is coming from, what's going into it, what the nutritional information is. And if you look at the nutritional information on the chicken that you just had, it is on par or better than what you'd get if you buy chicken from the shelf. So, to me, that gives me an enormous amount of confidence that I can audit that anytime I want, and I know the entire thing. And that's a level of safety that we have not been used to. And I would even argue that as we get to scale and as we start putting our products and trying to fine tune them,

we would argue that this is the safest chicken on the planet because we do not have E. coli. We do not have salmonella. We don't have antibiotics in the production process. We can audit every single ingredient that is going into feeding of this chicken cells. And you cannot have it right now with the other side. It's not possible to get away from E. coli and salmonella as long as the animal has a gut and it is making feces. It's just not possible. And antibiotics are a part of the production process. Look at the data. 70 to 80

percent of the antibiotics manufactured are actually being sold to raise animals. No one is selling antibiotics for us to go to scale. Like, these are the kinds of things. And we look at the nutritional labels. If we have comparable nutritional labels, good protein, good fats, nutritional labels, good protein, good fats, and minerals, vitamins, and you're tasting it, and the taste is delicious. What else is required to prove that this is safe? In my mind, it's always an evolution because we as humans now, if I take 100 people in the room, 33 of them will die from heart attacks. 33 will die from cancers. 20 of them will die from chronic diseases, diabetes, hypertension, and the rest from

accidents. I want us to challenge that paradigm, not just with cultivated meat, but with every food on the planet and say, can we make food better? Can we make food healthier? That's the big moonshot for food of saying, what can we do to make food healthier? I don't think we should accept a third of people dying from any of these causes.

And I think that's the opportunity I see in us being able to investigate and make the food better with Cultivated. And I would challenge the same for any other industry. That's a moonshot beyond the moonshot that we've been talking about. That's why I was telling you that's the fourth chapter. Meta bigger, yeah, that's chapter five, six or seven

down the line, I got it. Talk a little bit about industry cooperation. What's happening with the Tyson Foods and the ConAgras and the conglomerates in the animal agriculture space in terms of getting on board with, or kind of being at odds with, like who are the ones who are participating

and who are the ones who are still holding on to the status quo? Look, this is a great story of innovation coexisting with incumbents. And what better way to validate that this needs to exist in the world than incumbents saying that we want you to be successful. We want to be able to invest and help you solve some of the technological problems because we can help meet the demand for meat that's coming that we might be straining our existing supplies so much. So, you name Tyson, there's Cargill. Tyson and Cargill are the number one and number two meat producers in the country.

Both of them are invested in this industry. They're also invested in us. The North American Meat Institute is the largest meat and poultry trade association in the world. They are firmly behind cultivated meat coexisting along with conventional meat, and in fact, penned a letter with us to the U.S. government saying that cultivated meat should coexist with conventional meat. They are also firmly against any state in the U.S. trying to ban us from existing because they recognize that innovation should coexist along with the incumbent way of feeding people. So, I'm very happy to say that the mother lodge conglomerates who know where the demand is coming from and what kind of stress they're putting on our planet, on our health and the antibiotic use.

They've already seen this and they want this field to move forward and be an option. It's an existential threat to their business model. Nobody wants to be Kodak in this battle. And I think fundamentally, it goes to this idea of whether these businesses are in the cattle and chicken and animal slaughter business,

or whether they're in the business of providing protein to consumers. And if it's the latter, those are gonna be the entities that are gonna be open to what you're saying versus somebody who's holding on to a certain way of doing something. Yeah, and I'm saying that that's okay because here's the reason why. As long as we say there's a big tent wave approaching and saying, if there are people buying a product made in a certain way and there is demand for it, that industry is always going to exist. a certain way and there is demand for it, that industry is always going to exist.

And if there are people that are asking for a different way and having this choice, and we as an industry can support that, that industry will always exist on its own merit. What we are asking for simply is a level playing field. Do not have laws or policies that make it very hard for us to actually exist in this world. our policies that make it very hard for us to actually exist in this world. Because guess what? Like you said, we as a planet and species do not want to face an existential threat where we have to make a choice of giving up what we love. But I'll be very honest and tell you, cultivated meat as a field does not need to exist.

If people today decided that we don't need to make any more meat. Or if the choice is put to you of there is an existential threat coming our way, you've got a year to decide which path you want to pick. There's a path, if you pick, that you get to live. And as a path you pick, you don't get to live. I'm certain people are going to pick the path to live. But that existential question has never been posed. And that is the reason why I don't believe people will become vegetarian or vegan. Because the question is, do you want to die or do you want to eat beans? I think the whole world will choose beans. But that question is not going to be posed anytime soon. And until that question

is posed, what I think the next best question is, if you want to protect what you love to eat and also protect the life and the planet, would you make that choice? And I think that's what I'm here to say is an important question to answer first and develop a solution for. And ultimately, if we end up in a catastrophic situation where we've got to face this question of die or eat beans, I think people will pick beans.

They're not there. Human beings are not very good at future casting their own health decisions though. We're mostly concerned with what we're doing today and now, and we're deferring worries and concerns about our health down, we kick that can down the road, I think, right? So the beans versus death thing, I think is, yes, we should be doing that now anyway.

Do people do that? Not really, for the most part. You know, they're going to the drive-thrus and eating what they like to eat, which is related to this question that I have about what we've seen over the past, I don't know, three or four years with the plant-based analog companies.

We saw a lot of excitement around Beyond Meat and Impossible and all these new plays being made where there were crafting palatable analogs to meat and dairy products that now provided consumers with much more choice that allowed them to choose an option that was more ecologically sustainable, didn't involve animal agriculture. And with that, a spike initially, stock prices going up, lots of journalism around this,

lots of excitement about what this meant, the rise of the plant-based movement. But what we've seen in maybe the last 18 months or two years is a change in that sentiment where the tide has turned and a lot of people have turned against these plant-based companies. These are unhealthy, these are unnatural. What we need to do is go back to the way

we used to do things a long time ago, which kind of brings up that regen idea that we were talking about earlier. So I guess my question is, are there any lessons that you can learn from observing that, that you can then apply to kind of avoid the same fate when your products become commercially viable and available?

Okay, it's a really good question. I don't have the answer for it. And I wouldn't have been able to predict that plant-based will have such an incredible meteoric rise and also fall in the last few years. But that is an experience worth taking a lot of lessons from. I think the lessons we took away at Upside are the following. One is, taste is king. Ultimately, taste has to be the one that

wins over a consumer's palate. There were some products on the plant-based side that taste was amazing, but there was an oversaturation of the market with wannabe products that did not taste good. And I think that turned the consumer away. That is the most important thing where they felt like, hey, this is somewhat an inferior product on taste. I think looking back, I think holding that bar really high for anybody who was releasing products on the market

would have been great. And I think that's the lesson that this field should take away. The second one is, I think, underestimating the incredible amount of coordination that existed among, I think, the incumbent industry that has been facing threats of this nature for decades. And it was a simple playbook for them to execute and introduce seeds of doubt at the most vulnerable times and points. And I think, who has time to go and look and see, is this real? Is this not real? Is this actually healthy or not healthy? Because I would challenge a number of studies that are being quoted that are flawed studies. And I would also say,

there is an enormous body of evidence that shows that you could have healthy plants and healthy plant-based foods and healthy animal-based foods, and you can have unhealthy plant-based foods and unhealthy animal-based foods. It's not a binary thing, but unfortunately, the nuance has been lost. And the third thing, flat out, I think there is a responsibility on the part of media also to be able to present this in a way that is not just being geared for clickbait, but actually take the time to look through and say, here's the nuance. You could have healthy foods on both sides. Let's try to say, these are the things that should exist, and more and more innovation

should be put in there. And that has not happened so far. And I'm hoping that in our entry into the market, we will be open to taking any other critics and skeptics and people that do not believe. And I want to go into those arenas and talk to the people who absolutely do not believe that we are good or we should exist and have the dialogue with them. I do not want to be able to just say, I'm gonna ignore that group and I want to actually have a dialogue

and let's go head to head. Let's go science to science, technology to technology. Yeah, that's smart. The transparency, I think is everything. With respect to what you just shared, the playbook is pretty simple. All you had to do was say, these things are science experiments,

just look at the labels, there's all kinds of ingredients here that you can't pronounce, this is not good for you, end of discussion. And that's a pretty easy sell. And like you said, some are healthier than others. There are plenty of highly processed products out there that are not so great, others much better.

But I think that really shifted public sentiment. And I think the media was, complicit's the wrong word, but certainly was in service to that narrative, I think, in a big way. Yeah, and I'm hoping that there's a lesson to be learned from all of these and saying, look, there is a playbook that could have been pushed

back very easily, but not easily. If it was easy, it would have been done. I'd say there's a playbook that we know is coming at us. And getting out there in as many venues as possible and saying the why we need to exist without disparaging anybody else and saying, this is why we need to exist. We offer a different solution. We offer choice. We may not be as good as where you want us to be, but you have a choice not to eat it. I think just positioning it as choice, I think, is an important piece. The reason we try to be very careful in saying that we are a big tent company, that we just want to exist here. Regenerative can exist. Conventional meat production can exist.

Plants can exist. And a hybrid of all these can exist. And I think that mindset is the top, the most important message I want to leave today with the podcast also, that this is a big tent movement. And giving space for innovation like this ultimately is good for all of us and everybody in these industries. And I think politically, government staying out of it is a really important piece. So freedom and choice

can exist. And things like bans don't exist in this field. Unfortunately, one or two states in the U.S. are trying to say they want to ban the existence of cultivated meat based on misinformation. And you pointed out earlier in the show that there are gag laws. You cannot go to a slaughterhouse and take a camera out. There's literally no slaughterhouse in the country that has glass walls. If so, people will be asking for change even more vociferously than what they're asking for now. But all I'm asking is, I'm not asking you to change your gag laws. Just don't ban us. Do what you have to do to protect your incumbent industry, but let us live. It's like, I want to go back to an example of something called the APGAR score.

Have you heard about, you've had kids, right? Yeah. APGAR, A-P-G-A-R, basically is the rating you give when a baby is born. And it's basically on five things. Appearance, A, P for pulse, G is for grimace, and another A is for activity, and R is for respiration. You look at the baby and say, is the baby pink or blue? And you look at the baby and then say, does it have a good pulse? Or does it look like it's grimacing or not moving?

Is it breathing? Is it crying? You get a 10-point scale. The state at which this industry is, it's just been birthed, and we're looking to take the APGAR score. And we've only been eight months since the first-ever regulatory approval of this kind has come in the United States.

And there's a lot of learning that we have. And we're literally trying to survive and exist in this world. And then suddenly imagine if somebody comes and says, I'm going to put a big pillow on you and try to suffocate you. Or somebody is going to say, I'm not going to give you this little oxygen

you need just to take your first breath. Or I'm just going to not feed you. These are all the things that are happening to this industry right now, where it's too much force that's coming in and saying, I'm going to ban you from living. And the importance of this is an innovation that's just been birthed like this, it's going to have to go through its growing pains. It's going to go out to have to make some mistakes, get up, fall, get up. But the potential is immense. And it's just very puzzling to me that on one hand, we have skeptics writing off and saying, this industry is never going to scale. These people

are exaggerating it. There is hype and there is all of these things. And then at the same time, the irony is there are a couple of states in the US that are trying to ban us from even existing. How can you hold both those realities at the same time that we can never scale and then, oh my gosh, what if they scale? Let's ban them, throw the baby out of the bathwater. Yes.

That is an incredible reality. This is never gonna happen, it's impossible. Oh, this is a looming threat that we have to quash. We gotta give it a low APGAR score and put it in the NICU until it perishes. It just dies. Because it's a tidal wave that's coming in our direction that is a threat to our way of life.

Yeah. And the most important thing for us to remember in this is the people in the arena, people on my team and people on companies on these teams, it's really important to not get distracted by this. Because ultimately, it's the people in the arena that will make things happen. People that are in the arena with two feet planted solidly and saying, I'm not going anywhere.

I'm going to figure this problem out. You can throw a lot at me. I may not always be perfect, but I am here to live, and I'm here to make a difference. There's a lot of people in the audience that are throwing things at us. There's a lot of people in the audience that are cheering us. And there are people that are fair weather people that will come in and go based on the tidal wave where like, hey, lots of investments coming.

There's fair weather investors. There's fair weather media. People are like, well, media wave, lots of things to write about. Then the wave goes down. Lots of things to be skeptical about. Fairweather employees even, who are like, I'll be there because it's cool to be in this company.

But when the going gets hard, boy, there's some people that are like, I'm out, right? All of these things are happening in the arena. But you can't be influenced by the daily weather pattern, basically is what you're saying, right? Yeah. It's about the macro climate. Yes.

That takes a certain kind of stoic sensibility, right? To focus on the important things and not get caught up and discouraged or even influenced by that weather pattern that is always shifting. Yeah, it does. And I am incredibly grateful for people who opted into this journey and are sticking with the journey. I'm also grateful for people who opted into the journey, gave their best and left because it was too much

for them. I would love to be able to have people that recognize the weather pattern and say, hey, there will be rainy days, there will be sunny days, and there will be thunderstorms. And I think the industry is going through all of that. But through all of this, I feel like we're getting closer and closer to the light that's been shining. And it started off as a tiny, tiny crack of light. It's become a little bit larger. I think the closer and closer we get to it, I think it's going to be a big gaping hole. Like we can walk through and say, oh my gosh.

And look, that's kind of what we are in this for. It had to be massive though when the FDA gave you that approval in June. I mean, what if that had gone the other way? And it could have easily gone the other way. And that's really why, like when we started this work, there is a company out there called Aqua Bounty. And they had this idea of having a really fast growing fish, like a salmon, by introducing a gene from an eel and thought that it'll be more efficient. And it took them, I think, like close to two decades to get FDA approval. And that was just for an existing animal. And people kept throwing it at us and saying, look, if they took two decades to get it,

there's no chance that you're going to get it. So that- That wasn't for a cultivated animal product. That was for introducing an eel gene into a factory farmed fish. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was-

That is a little weird though and scary. But look, when there's no precedent, right? People point out to the worst possible thing and you have to succeed despite people's fears of the worst possible thing. And that's what we were being thrown at. We kept saying the exact same thing. You said, hey, that has got nothing to do with this. But they're like, well, who knows? What if they go that way? And that's what if is the introduction of doubt? And the hardest part of the resolve in pursuing things of this nature where you're pioneering

and you don't know the answer, we don't know if we'll be successful. We don't know if we are the company that'll get to the finish line. It's a really hard thing to hold in mind and stay focused. So all I'm telling our team is like, look, this is the burden of pioneers

and we are never going to get away from it because this industry is just being given birth to. So you can work your entire lifetime, but you mentally have to be prepared to have a pioneer mindset. Because we are literally blazing the trail. And sometimes we might go down the rabbit hole. We need to recorrect and come back. And if that mindset and mental model doesn't exist for everybody in this industry, I don't think the industry is going to have a chance. What have you learned about entrepreneurship in general from this? I mean, this is like a case study in and of itself on trying to pioneer a new market, right? Being a first mover in a brand new idea and sector of the economy.

Like what could you share with a budding entrepreneur who's listening to this or watching it who has maybe nothing to do with the food space? I'd say an entrepreneur really will be asked the deepest of the depths of anything that they thought that they had in them and that they're prepared for, to be prepared for something that is thousand times more than that and have that explicit conversation with the people around them, their family, their friends, and say, hey, look, I think this is going to be incredibly hard, harder than anything else I've done in my life.

And I'm hearing that it'll be a thousand times worse. Are you going to be able to support me in my lowest moments? Oh, there'll be plenty of those lowest moments because the mental health challenges for entrepreneurs, I think are probably one of the hardest for any choice of profession you can pick. If you read this book by Alex Honnold, Alone on the Wall,

it feels so lonely. Although you're surrounded by your friends and family and your team members, it's a very lonely moment that you'll get to. And asking for help is important. Saying that, hey, there are moments I'll have blind spots. There are moments where I'm literally

not going to be able to get out of my own way. I need you to be there for me during that time. I think it's a conversation people need to have, especially if they're taking entrepreneurship in an area that has not been done before. So I've started two medical device companies. It's hard

still, but the work I'm doing for the other medical device company or had to do is a thousand times less than what I'm doing for this. And that's also hard. I'm not belittling what entrepreneurship in an established field is. But if you're picking entrepreneurship in a non-established field where literally everybody is betting you'll fail and they're most likely going to be right, and you're waking up every morning to do that work, yeah, better have your mental health ready. Yeah. No blueprint, no blazed road ahead of you. Like the medical device, it's like,

oh, there's a way that you do this. I did this before, other people have done it, this is how you do it, but you're trying to basically bushwhack your way. Yeah, I can imagine it's lonely and you're shouldering tremendous amount of, how's your sleep? Are you getting some sleep? I am starting to wear this thing. I noticed you got the whoop on. What's your sleep and recovery score today?

Oh, I don't wanna look. Yeah, it's that thing, it There are some days that I'm- Yeah, it's that thing, it's like some days, maybe don't look at it in the morning because you still have to do the things you have to do. I basically set myself a goal in 2024 that I'm only gonna measure myself on one single thing, sleep, seven hours a night.

And if I can do it 80% of the days this year, that's a big win for me. That's pretty good. Seven hours. You sticking to that? So far, April has been good. Yeah, your monthly report. April's been good. Yeah.

I wanna keep it that way. I gotta let you go. But one thing I kind of wanna make sure I understand is what the future of your imagination looks like. Understanding there are obstacles in your path and you are bushwhacking where there is no road on some level. There are known knowns or known unknowns

or unknown unknowns ahead of you. So it becomes very hard to predict what the future two, five, 10 years from now is gonna look like. On some level, maybe there's tarot cards involved, I don't know. But if you had your druthers understanding that you will be facing all these obstacles and setbacks, can you share a little bit about what you hope it will look like

in, I don't know, five years from now? That's a good question because I think it's reasonable to ask about five years. I'd like to be able to answer the 50-year question also, but five years from now, what I'd like to do is to climb the next hill I talked about. The proof of scale that we could scale production of cultivated meat and use that as a model that shows path to profitability for a lot of people to get into business is what I would hope to do five years from now looking back. That has got a lot of uncertainty because it requires a lot of capital infusion.

It requires the science and the technology and the manufacturing capabilities that we have now to be able to work at 10 to 100x larger scale than what we've done so far. That's a known unknown. I'm actually not worried about unknown unknowns. So I'm like, there's nothing I can do about it. So completely not worried. The known unknown is, will the work that we've done so far actually scale?

And we'll know the answer in five years. And my hope is that it will scale because the fundamentals are very strong. Everything that we're looking at is telling us it'll scale. But the proof is literally showing it. So I want to be able to say, okay, I would want in five years from now to walk you through the production facility that literally shows you under the roof, one roof, where's the first animal cell becoming the first full

product that you'd say, I'm ready to buy it. And there's just been zero cruelty along the way. And it's starting to show how environmental impact can be a lot lower. That's what I'd like to show five years from now. I'd also like to be available for sale in all the 50 United States. And I'd like to be able to say that we had a significant infrastructure grant and a loan that we got from the U.S. government to be able to say, yes, this technology is a flagship technology.

It's a crown jewel for the United States not to lose its leadership in. And we are firmly investing in this. And I'd love to be able to have a, it's like the World Business Chicago, the big event where all the food producers will come through together and firmly say, we are in this together. We are not competing, but we are collaborating. And at least have like the Geneva Convention. It's kind of a statement that says, food production, food safety, food security is important. And innovation has a firm place along with incumbents. I would like to have a signed declaration of that at a convention in the next five years.

50 years. 50 years from now, I'd say that we are not going to talk about shortages of meat production. And that just like, you know, I'd say if I look at the last 50 years, the things that people were incredibly skeptical of, like you could actually treat heart attacks and have people live and resuscitate and bring them back to life. That 50 years from now, we won't even be having a conversation about can we make enough meat to feed ourselves? Can we make the tradeoffs of greenhouse gas emissions? And can we make the tradeoffs of zoonotic diseases?

I'd say 50 years from now, we'd be looking back and saying, I don't know why we are so worried about it. There is this production method that can scale. There is these options that we have. And we can now choose to have food coming from whether it's regenerative or cultivated or plant or hybrids. And it becomes a non-issue that every country can feel like they have food safety and food security, and they know how to work, and they were working on very different problems by then. Humanity has to make it to 2075 though first, right? Yeah, well, I am an optimist.

Look, I think at every point in this journey in the last eight years, I could have looked at this glass as half empty, and everybody in the world could have looked at this as half empty, but I the world could have looked at this as half empty. But I think literally everybody that is behind this industry is looking at it as half full. And I think I'm an optimist.

So 2075 is half full. You wouldn't have made it this far if you were a half empty type of guy, Uma, I don't think. You have to have a natural disposition to optimism to be able to stay in this fight that you're in. Yeah, I believe so. And thankfully, it's natural. It's genetically programmed. And I'm glad that I have been born on the side where I can take the view of an optimist. And I respect the view of a pessimist because that's important to shape our approaches. And it's important to be able to hear, even when it's very hard to

hear the critics and skeptics, I appreciate the signal that's coming up from the noise. 99% of all the stuff that I'm seeing is noise, but there's a signal in there, which is like, hey guys, we want you to succeed, but tell us how you will succeed. Genuinely, I'm curious. That's the group I'd like us to engage with.

And I think, you know, optimists also have to be kept practical and I think the pessimists do that job for us. Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you feel is important for people to understand about this whole world of cultivated meat? Well, I think the only thing I'd say is, I think it's pretty evident from this conversation that I come from a perspective of these are problems that can be solved, will be solved, and have been solved with a track record. And there are yet more problems that need to be solved. And I firmly believe they can be solved. There's like literally no ifs and buts about it. But it's not an easy path. It's not a guaranteed

path. It's not a guaranteed return on investment. So I'm just basically ensuring that the message is of hope. And when we are walking the message of hope, some people may perceive it as hype. But that is the part I want to be very crystal clear. I am taking the view that all the fundamental reasons why this is going to be successful exist. We need to figure out a way to put them together on a timeframe that makes a difference for people who are wanting this to be successful, but genuinely are skeptical. And I just want that message not to be lost. The work we have to do, there's multiple chapters to it. But ultimately, we are the people in the arena. But ultimately, we are the people in the arena.

The best intentions are what are driving our actions. And not all actions will be successful, but it is the pursuit of those actions that is going to get us to the finish line. And I'm just asking people to let us do our work, have a genuine mindset of inquiry, do not succumb to the quick headline or the quick dismissal of an innovation that has transformative impact.

And I'm asking people to join the journey when they feel like joining. There is no forced choice here. This is literally free will and choice. Join when you can. Otherwise, just be watching us. And if you have it in you to support us, support us. And if somebody does want to support, what is the best way for them to do that? Approach it with a genuine inquiry. I will engage. Our team will engage. But from a place of genuine

inquiry is what I'm asking for. I think that gives us a level playing field. And we are here to coexist and to build a big tent with people that are already working very hard to do good in this world. And I believe genuinely in the depth and sincerity of humanity. And I feel like there's a solution we're putting in front of humanity where I do think genuinely

that when humans are given a choice of making the right call that will be good for not just humans, but all life on the planet, they will make that call. And I'm just asking for a chance for it. I appreciate the integrity that you're bringing to this mission, as well as the honesty and the transparency, not just to the manufacturing piece and the sort of industry technology piece behind Upside, but with respect to the timeline that you're facing and the obstacles and the uncertainty, you know, there's so much ahead of you and it isn't an easy path. And I'm sure it is very lonely for you to be on this path, but to hold on to that optimism and to immunize yourself

from the noise and the weather, et cetera, to stay focused on solving this very big problem is a worthy act of service on behalf of the world. It is a huge problem. The way that we produce food for the planet is not sustainable. It's not ethically sound and we do need a new way forward. And as much as I would like to think

that everybody would be struck plant-based or vegan, I've been around long enough to know that that's never going to happen. And we do need to meet people where they're at. And the demand for meat is only increasing, especially in areas like India and China, where we're seeing the ascension of the middle class and their appetite for meat.

And how are we gonna meet that? We need a better way. And I think you showing up to try to meet that demand and do it in a way that is more compassionate for animals, humans, and the planet is, like I said, at the top of this conversation, a most worthy investment of your chi, my friend, your life energy, this mission you're on.

So thank you for what you do. I appreciate it. I speak for humanity in that regard. And thank you for coming here today and sharing with me. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Rich. I really deeply appreciate this opportunity and the long-form dialogue we could have had. And I hope to come back. Good, man. And I got to taste this. Right here, you saw a vegan eat chicken. Yes. Not a chicken analog. This is actual chicken. 100%.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. 17 years. When you have something more to share or some breakthrough or anything like that, please come back and share it with me. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Cheers, peace.

Cheers. That's it for today. Thank you. page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors, who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful.

And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davey Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley,

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Plants. Namaste. Thank you.