Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - Slaughter-Free Meat, Coming Soon To Your Dinner Tables w/ Josh Tetrick | EP #58

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

In this episode, Peter and Josh, CEO of GOOD Meat, delve into the revolutionary concept of producing meat without slaughtering a single animal. The conversation explores the journey of GOOD Meat, from its inception in a studio apartment to its current expansive headquarters in Alameda, California. Tetrick's vision is to transform the global food system, reducing harm to animals and the environment while providing consumers with a sustainable and ethical alternative to conventionally produced meat. 14:24 | The Story of Josh and Chicken 24:44 | Meat From an Antibiotic-Fed World 1:07:50 | The Future of Meat: Cultivated Josh Tetrick is the CEO of Eat Just a company that specializes in no-kill meat. Eat Just was founded in 2011 by Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk. The company’s goal is to replace chicken dinners with cultivated fillets in the near future. Eat Just recently netted $370m in investments, including wealth funds backed by Qatar and the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul G Allen Check out GOOD Meats _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now:  Tech Blog _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots and Mindsets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. We want to make meat without the need to slaughter a single animal. We need to reinvent how we produce high quality protein for individuals. Let's give folks the meat they want, but let's just make it in a different, better way. Just because we used to do something an old way for a long time doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. The chicken that we eat for food today is not the original chicken. When you need to slaughter an animal for food,

you have to feed that animal. Why not just skip a lot of that process? And people go, that's disgusting. And my answer is, have you ever actually been in a slaughterhouse? And you look at salmonella, you look at E. coli, you look at fecal contamination. It's the definition of cruelty.

I want us to create food that is causing a whole less harm. I don't know why we have to cause any harm to any living thing if we don't absolutely have to. Hi everybody, Peter DeMandis here and welcome to Moonshots. On this episode, we're going to have an amazing conversation with a Moonshot entrepreneur, Josh Tetrick, who is the CEO of Good Meat. Now, here's the question. Would you eat lab-grown meat, lab-grown chicken, fish, pork, tuna, whatever it might be? We're going to hear about the technology to feed the world with benefits to you, your pocketbook, your body, and the planet.

Josh is amazing. He's also one of the best storytellers. He's going to teach us why storytelling as a Moonshot entrepreneur is so critically important. All right, get ready for something that's going to blow your mind and make you hungry. Let's jump into the episode. Everybody, Peter here. Welcome to Moonshots. I'm here with a dear friend, a brilliant entrepreneur, Josh Tetrick. Josh, good to see you, pal. Hey, Peter. Good to see you. Where on the planet are you today? I am in the East Bay in Alameda, California. So Alameda is where our headquarters is based. Is it exactly where it was last time? Has it grown and expanded into new territories?

It has. Yeah, it's grown and expanded expanding as we started off in a studio apartment in Southern California then we moved to a garage in the mission in San Francisco then we moved to the last place that you saw which was an old bread company I know that now we've moved Alameda a little bit more professionalized a little bit better lab infrastructure our production facility and a team of people who are making this happen. You know, let's kick off with your moonshot because it's an ambitious moonshot that, in reality, billions of people around the world want you to succeed with. How would you describe your moonshot at Good Meat? We want to make meat without the need to slaughter a single animal we think the world's

most consumed meat shouldn't require billions of animals shouldn't require a third of our planet just to plant swine cord to fiend those animals we think we can make meat in a smarter way and that process is called cultivating meat instead of slaughtering meat. Yeah. And it's a chance to reinvent what we humans have been doing for hundreds of thousands and millions of years. You know, I've often thought about the fact that just because we used to do something an old way for a long time doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. I don't think people realize the implications on every aspect of our lives and the environment of our food systems, our food economics. If you want to just jump in one second and talk about that. So we've, as a species, been eating animals for millions, excuse me, for tens of thousands of years, first with a spear. And then really

beginning in the 1950s, we began to mechanize, industrialize the process. There was a chicken farmer in Delaware who got an extra order of chickens and she didn't have enough space for them outdoors. So she said, well, maybe I'll move in inside my house. And that was really the beginning of what we call conventional animal agriculture, where we could farm billions of animals to feed ourselves. The issue with that, though, is that about a third of our planet today is dedicated just to feeding those animals that we eat. So I'll say it again for your listeners because it's a harder thing to really wrap one's uh brain around a third of our planet like a third of the land mass of planet earth one third of it so you know we see those you know those uh potential sources

of intelligent life that may or may not have been visiting us through the you know the recent congressional investigations imagine them coming down here and doing a survey of the planet and then asking themselves well how are they using this planet and one of the alien cells what seems like a third of it is dedicated to this food well is it for them no no it's it's to feed the animals that they eat and then you know they probably then leave right away because they determine that we're not the most intelligent species. But that third of a planet that we use to feed the animals we eat, the total volume of that food is actually more than we feed the billion people who are going to bed hungry every single night. It's insane. Yeah. The second issue with the consumption of all these animals is that

when we look at what is driving climate change, all of the billions of animals that are slaughtered for our consumption are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transportation sources combined. So many of the soy and corn fields that are planted are where biodiverse rainforests used to stand, which are sucking in carbon from the atmosphere and helping to mitigate climate change. Third, the animals we eat are often packed body to body in small spaces, and that leads to breeding ground of zoonotic diseases like a mad cow disease or like an avian flu. And then the last, you know, thing, Peter, and this is the thing that resonates the most with me, not the most with investors or, you know, my friends. I don't know why we have to cause any harm to any living thing if we don't absolutely have to. You know, it's fascinating. First of all, I love those three massively compelling reasons.

I love those three massively compelling reasons. I think along with the first reason you brought up is the fact that as people are moving out of extreme poverty to poverty to middle class, they all want higher and higher quality protein. And who are we to say they can't, right? And if they can, then what do you clear cut more rainforest do you chop down you know city buildings and plant crops there to feed them we need to reinvent how we produce high quality protein for individuals yeah i uh i spent a little bit of time in uh sub-saharan africa in um in one of the countries i worked in, Liberia, which is the third poorest country on the planet, these two security guards were outside the building I was working in.

And every day when I would come in and leave, I'd say hi to them and we'd talk a lot about food. And I would notice that 29 out of the 30 days of the month, they would be eating corn, potatoes, cheap plant-based foods. And then one day of the month, and it was the day they got paid, they'd be eating chicken and beef. And, you know, I thought in that moment just how difficult the situation is because I want them to get paid. I want them to get paid more. I want them to rise up the income ladder and have improved livelihoods. But as they do that, they're going to want to, just like us, consume more chicken and beef and pork and lamb and seafood. And how do we allow them to do that without creating the incredible pressure that it's placing on our health and our environment, our ocean ecosystems.

And I think the way around it is let's give folks the meat they want, but let's just make it in a different, better way. Amen. I want to go back to that story you told about the woman bringing the chickens into the house. And I want to, I was fascinated in prepping for this session. I asked myself the question, how many chickens are there on planet Earth? And when I Googled that, I was blown away. I think people have no idea how many chickens are on planet Earth or cows or sheep or pigs. What's the number you keep in your head for the number of chickens on the planet? It's about 90 billion, at least, that I've seen. 90 billion at least that I've seen. And Peter, what's amazing about the volume of farm animals is the total biomass of the chickens, of the cows, of the pigs that are slaughtered every year

is more than the total biomass of every other animal, human and other non-human animals combined. human and other non-human animals combined. There was an article I read about, you know, what would be the most relevant traces of humanity millions of years from now? Like what would be our defining feature? Chicken poop. Someone suggested chicken bones. Wow. And I hope we're known for a little bit more than that. I hope so too. I hope so too. So this woman brings the chicken into her

home. Why did she do that? And then what happened next? And how did we end up going from, I don't know, hundreds of thousands to tens of billions of chickens on this planet. Yeah. So, yeah. So, she had a nice little outdoor farm and this is how farm animals used to be raised. And it's still the conception that we often have today, right? There are animals come from a farm with a red barn and a little girl catching butterflies in a net, but that's a fantasy vision. But back in the day, it was actually true. So she lived in Delaware and she had a home with about 50 chickens in her yard, basically in her backyard. And she got a delivery. And this time the delivery truck was much bigger than it usually is. And it had about 500 chickens. And she didn't have enough space in her backyard. So she thought,

okay, well, I don't want to turn down this delivery. I'll just bring them inside. And bring inside then did a really important thing for the animal industry. It then stimulated this movement where animals can be raised in much closer quarters and much higher densities. And by raising animals in much higher densities, you can produce more meat per square inch. You can produce more meat per minute, per day, per hour, per month. And that obviously is a big motivator for meat companies. So that accident, and I think her first name is Cecilia, then led to the advent of the conventional animal protein industry that we have today, because this was after World War II. You had people move in the suburbs, they had more income, and there was a real demand for more animal protein. And companies begin to realize that

there are a lot of technologies, automation that was being used previously in the automotive industry that could be applied to animal protein. And that's what happened. And so that was the birth of Purdue and Tyson's and all the massive industrialization of this industry. That's right. That's right. Amazing. It was also the birth Peter of a whole new kind of bird.

So the chicken that we eat for food today is not the original chicken. The original chicken is called the jungle fowl. It was athletic, fly to the top of trees, was a very agile predator. But what we've done to that jungle fowl is we've created sort of a monster chicken. The chicken we have today lives until 45 days. Its breast isn't large. It can barely stand up. Its colors have been wiped away only to have white feathers. It's engineered for a single purpose, to make as much chicken as quickly as it possibly can before it's slaughtered and then fed to us. So it is a genetically hardwired chicken for food consumption and nothing else. Yeah. I don't think people realize, you know,

people talk about where I'm anti-GMO and I, you know, not for this, but we've been genetically modifying our foods intensely, whether it is the chicken, as you just said, or an ear of corn that a hundred000 years ago was the size of, you know, my pinky and had like five kernels on it. It's amazing. And from that innovation to today's industry, protein industry, it's the number one consumed protein on the planet by far, isn't it? It is. Yeah. It's chicken and then it's pork and then beef and then lamb. The thing about, you know, these animal protein companies and what we did, no one, including, including, I think her name is Cecilia who moved those chickens indoors,

was doing it for bad intentions, right? They weren't doing it thinking, you know, I really want to inflict harm on the planet or these animals today. They were doing it because this seems like a more efficient way to produce animal protein. That was the logic. So I, you know, I stepped back and I get it. I can see how that could have happened. I see the logic of it. The problem is when you begin to expand that industry to serve the needs of seven, eight plus billion people, you then have a big issue. Because when you need to slaughter an animal for food, you have to feed that animal. And when you have to feed that animal, then you need all this land and all this water and all these resources. land and all this water and all these resources. And that it's the sort of the, the idea that you have to slaughter the animal in the first place is the first inefficiency. And if you can somehow

change the paradigm that you can get meat without that slaughter, you can create a more efficient way of making, uh, of making meat. One of the things I love about you, Josh, other than amazing human heart and entrepreneur is your storytelling. And we've talked about this before. And those listening, I want you to listen carefully to Josh as he tells his stories, because it's part of what you built inside your organization. And as we're serving entrepreneurs here, I'm going to come back to storytelling as one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have. So if you listen to that conversation about Cecile

or what happened in this farmhouse, it brings it, it makes it vivid. And we as humans are storytellers and we consume data as stories. So tell me the story, if you would, of the first time. So you had been running Eat Just, which we'll talk about a little bit prior to this. And like I like to say, an overnight success after 11 years of hard work. You started it back in 2011, looking at the monk bean, right? Monk bean.

Yeah. Yeah. Being able to be scrambled and cooked like eggs. And it's amazing if anybody's ever eaten the Just Egg products. But I remember when you pulled me aside, I was visiting your facility, your last facility, and you said, we're going into cultured meat. And we can talk about whether back then I was thinking we're calling it stem cell grown meats or lab grown meats. But what was that founding story? What was going on? When did you click in that like there is an opportunity? Because it's massive as compared to uh anything else it is

well i'll go back to i'll go back a little bit so i i was raised in birmingham alabama on a lot of chicken um i remember getting off the bus at chelsea middle school when i was um when i was 10 and if i was lucky my mom would have a plate of chicken wings and collard greens waiting for me. I remember eating chicken sandwiches at Burger King. I remember eating lots of meat at outdoor barbecues before football games. I grew up in a meat culture. That's always been with me. The second important step was I read a paper when I was in law school. I was in a constitutional law class by this professional named Catherine McKinnon. And she was teaching a solid class, but I was more interested in this NASA paper on culturing goldfish for long-term space exploration.

I don't know why they picked goldfish. Goldfish. No, I don't know why, but they had run an experiment where they wanted to see if they could culture goldfish for, you know, for long-term spaceflight. And then as we built the company, I began to think, well, what else could we do that would be next? What else could we do that if we solved it, wouldn't just solve a portion of the problem, but might solve almost all of the problem. And I thought about all the folks I grew up with, really good people who love meat, right? I thought about the challenges in the plant-based industry. Sometimes no matter how good it tastes, the fact that it's not actually meat is a limiting step for good

people to choose it. And I thought about the technology around cultivating meat. And then I also had my best friend, co-founder of the company, who's always there to push me to do things. His name is also Josh, who said, you know what? You should go for it. So we decided that that would be what we would do next. And we began a small research program to investigate it. And that eventually led to where we are today. What year was that in? It's about five years ago. And take me through this because you'd been working with plant proteins. In fact, you had built one of the most extraordinary databases of all plant proteins out there and their attributes and how they combine to create different kinds of foods.

And it was amazing. And you had a lab full of protein scientists, right? And Michelin star chefs as well to cook it. That's right. And so wasn't there a story that involved your dog as well? Well, my, yeah, my, my, my buddy, Jake, who I lost a little bit ago, we named the, the initial project, the Jake project as a, as a nod to him, you know, what he did for my life.

So the Jake project had started on a, uh, on an idea that this is a big chance to really impact food insecurity and do something good for the world, uplift humanity. Uh, what did you do next? So what is, what is a moonshot entrepreneur like you do when you have that big problem? Do you hire people? Do you do research? What was step one in this venture? talked to people who had looked at this in the past. We had our scientists look at what's happening in the world of biopharmaceutical research and production around cell line development and production. We had them gather information to see what is the current status of where cultivating meat is so we could then plan our next steps. So our scientists spent six to eight months doing that. And what they came back with is a lot of the techniques being used in the biopharmaceutical world around cell line development and culturing cells could be applied to this. There's been very little thought on how to translate that to food production and there's

nothing just from the first principles perspective that would make anyone think that this isn't doable so that was enough to say all right let's now take the next step and really begin hiring people to build a program to attempt to really do it so you hire those people you have and i love the fact that you used you know zero, zero first principle thinking, right? This is what Elon attributes to his success. It's like, is there any fun, anything fundamentally that will prevent this from actually happening? And if there's not, then you can look at from a first principles, you know, will this be as cost-effective or more cost-effective than the alternative? And here, the answer appears to be

sure. You don't have to grow the entire whole animal here. You can just grow the meat segment of it. And so it should be cheaper and it should be more cost effective. And can it be healthier? Can it be better for the environment? So I think check, check, check all the way down that line. So you hire people and talk about the early days. Did you buy the equipment and start producing in-house? I mean, was it easy? Was it a challenge? What kind of failures did you face in that first instantiation of this effort? We learned an important lesson in the first year or two, which was a lot of the solutions to this are already out there. They're just in different industries. For example, the process of cell line development, biopharmaceutical manufacturing has really

got that down. The process of culturing cells in the case of a vaccine to produce antibodies, biopharma companies have got that down. The process of culturing cells in the case of a vaccine to produce antibodies, biopharma companies have got that down. Food production is really good at taking a raw material and converting it to a finished product. So we learned that there wasn't some magic new breakthrough idea. It was really a process of combining these different elements across different industries together. And that was that was a really important insight for us. And then we eventually learned, which is related to where we are now, just because you can do it on a small scale. And we were making, you know, bits of chicken, you know,

back in the day, doesn't mean a, it will get approved by regulators, be folks outside your friends and your family will like it and then see that you can actually scale it up. Yeah. I think making it, turning into a business is, is a challenge. So let's, let's take that a little bit at a time. First of all, you know, when I talk about cultured meat and I'm on stage and I'm like, you know, just super excited, I'm saying, listen, we're going to make this more efficient, right? Because what is meat products today? It's photons from the sun, 93 million miles away, traveled to the earth. They get absorbed by chloroplasts and plants, and they get eaten by the animal that then digests them and turns them into proteins,

and then the muscle, and then you eat that portion of the animal. And you're really effectively eating embodied energy from the sun in this regard. But why not just skip a lot of that process? And people go, that's disgusting. And my answer is, have you ever actually been in a slaughterhouse? It's not. It's beautiful. So how do you go from a, you know, so let's talk about the technology a piece at a time, if we would. Then I want to come back to the environment and cultural elements. a time, if we would, then I want to come back to the environment and cultural elements. You get those cells from where and what type of cells are you starting with for a chicken product?

Yeah. And I do want to get back to that let's unpack that because yeah it's the most beautiful form of of cleanest form of food we're gonna have yeah future i believe yeah okay so let's talk about so i think first first in dealing with it step one is realizing where our meat comes from today and in order to realize where our meat comes from today one really has to disentangle the old mcdonald had a farm fantasy from what actually is. And what actually is, is a, you know, antibiotic fed engineered chicken lasting for 45 days, about a hundred thousand to 200,000 in a warehouse that never sees the light, never sees that farmer's little girls catching butterflies in her net or that red barn. They just see a warehouse and then they're

slaughtered. And it's a very similar story for other farm animals. So that is the meat we eat today. That's 99%. It's a definition of cruelty. Yeah. And that's 99% of it. And for some folks who do choose pasture-raised or other much better forms of meat, just an important reminder that might be your choice, but 99% is that. You've sort of got to get people there. Now, as it relates to cultivated meat, something that would be much better in some ways in cultivated meat would be if people just ate beans and greens and fruit. We'd just skip a step altogether. ate beans and greens and fruit. We just skipped a step altogether. But that's a challenge because just like people like driving cars, sometimes instead of walking to work, you got to meet people where they are. But as it relates to cultivated meat specifically,

it starts with a cell and you can get that cell from a cell bank. You can get it from a biopsy of an animal. You can get it from a fresh piece of meat. And we get ours that's currently being sold from a cell bank. And that original cell comes from an egg. And let me pause you there because one of the things that you don't, people don't realize is if you're starting with a cell bank where you have a very characterized cell, you can actually pick the original genetic stock, if you would, of the chicken, the fish, the pig, whatever, that is the most healthiest, right? The best tasting.

And you can raise, you know, people talk about different cuts of meat and this one tastes better. Imagine if the cost of creating the best cut of meat or chicken is identical. It's, you know, it's independent because you just pick the original source DNA, if you would, of that cell. And that's an incredible idea. That's exactly right. It's a way of, it's a much more precise way of getting and clean way of getting the meat that we want. After you identify the appropriate cell line, then you need to identify the right feed for that cell line. So in the same way that a chicken or a cow or a pig in a warehouse is consuming soy and corn and muscle and fat are building up on their bones

before they're slaughtered, the cells need to consume. And they're consuming vitamins and minerals and amino acids, some of the same stuff that's made up, that soy and corn is made up of. After you've identified the right feedstock, you then take that cell line with the appropriate feed and then you begin manufacturing your meats. And that meat is manufactured in a stainless steel vessel called a bioreactor. It's creating the conditions for that cell to grow. And get what amounts to raw chicken or beef or pork in that vessel. And we're talking about the muscle cells, right? This is the muscle, which is the meat that we eat, whether it's of any of these animals. And so you're cultivating and growing these muscle cells in this medium, in this growth

medium. Well, you can do, Peter, you can do muscle, you can do fat. So it depends what you're trying to optimize for. And then after about three weeks, you're removing. So just if you're listeners, just imagine a stainless steel vessel that looks somewhat similar to what a brewery would look like. And imagine taking the top off that stainless steel vessel and what you see when you look down, it is raw, unstructured chicken, beef, or pork. Then you take that out of the vessel. The technical

term is you harvest it from that. Is it a slurry? Is it a thick pudding-like substance? What does it feel like or look like? It looks like, and I need to figure out a better way to, to communicate this one is it looks like take a chicken breast, put it in a Vitamix on low blend for, I don't know, 45 seconds. That's what it looks like. Got it. Okay. So then we, uh, then we take it out of that vessel and then we run it through a process called extrusion, which is applying heat and pressure to the raw chicken, beef, or pork in creating what the end product is, whether that's a chicken nugget or a chicken strip or, or a hamburger. And then we feed it to the consumer so

from a so you're restructuring it essentially giving it structure once again exactly exactly so from cell to feed to vessel to finished product to shipment to a restaurant all without the need to slaughter an animal and today it animal. And today it's being done on very small scales, both in Singapore where we're selling and now the United States where we're also selling. And first of all, congrats just for folks who haven't watched this sector as closely as I have, Josh and Good Meat was the first to get approval in Singapore, the first to get approval in the world in Singapore, and is one of two or just one of one in the U.S. with FDA approval? One of two, yeah, one of two that have both FDA and USDA approval and have sold in the United States.

Amazing. Amazing. So super excited about that. And so it's the end, let's talk about the end goal here, which is going to be healthier for you, cheaper for you, locally generated, better for the planet. And we can parse those a little bit. So talk about, you know, where this could be produced. Can you imagine having a good meat or your production partners in every city around the world? Will I eventually buy products that are produced locally versus shipped from around the world? Yeah, the things that you need are talent. So talent that you would have that would work in food production or biopharmaceutical production.

So you wanna have an environment you get talent like that, but you don't need the same land. So a country like Singapore, the reason they're behind it, a country like Qatar or Saudi, the reason they're looking into it is because you don't require all the land and all the water and all the resources. You can make the same amount of meat in a much smaller space. So in the future, yeah, you'll have cultivated meat facilities in suburbs and

urban areas. You can be much closer to the production. And one of the key things, and we'll get into this more, is the economics of building those facilities today are probably the biggest limiting step to this happening faster. We're using principles that are being applied in the world of biopharmaceutical production, but these stainless steel vessels that we're talking about need to be much larger. And they have to be designed and engineered and purchased and installed. And that's a real limiting step to ultimately this being the meat that we all consume. Surmountable, but a challenge. But no different than Tesla going from the Roadster to the Model Y and 3.

Exactly. Healthier for you. There are no endometrics in the process. You control the entire process start to finish and can keep it really healthy. And what the cells eat as well is carefully controlled. That's right. So can we create a healthier product as a result of that? Yeah, I would think about health in a few different dimensions. So first is today we believe it to be healthier because you don't have all the antibiotics used. You don't have the risk of zoonotic disease. When you look at cultivated versus conventional, and you look at salmonella, you look at E. coli, you look at fecal contamination, non-existent in the cultivated space, but very much existent in the conventional space.

But other health metrics like saturated fat, like cholesterol, they're more or less the same. That's today. In a future state, you could imagine creating beef that has significantly less saturated fat, beef that has more protein, beef that's potentially cholesterol free. Now, that's going to require some advancements in gene editing. So we have a CRISPR program that's happening internally. And so applying CRISPR to cultivated meat has really significant potential to create meat products that are more cost-effective and healthier than the conventional sources. Love that. Let's talk about cost because, I mean, for me, you know, I talk about the six Ds of exponential, you know, when you digitize and dematerialize and demonetize and democratize. This is the chance for us to, you know, effectively digitize food production in a form.

How low cost could it get? I mean, right now, if I understand correctly, I mean, you're basically selling these chicken products at the same price in the U.S. and Singapore, but you're taking a loss on those sales. Is that correct? That's right. Where could it get to? Yeah. So right now, the average price of, well, let me take a step back. So the market for meat today is about a trillion dollars.

Wow. The average price, and so tens of billions of animals are slaughtered every year, they're sold, market a trillion. About half of that trillion are products like sausages, chicken nuggets, chicken strips, ground beef, minced pork. And then the other half are steaks, more products with bones in them. So that's roughly how it's split. Roughly the average cost of meat today of the main sources of meat, it's about $4. If you combine chicken, beef, and pork. Per kilogram or pound? Per pound.

Okay. I know we're stuck in the US on this old imperial system. The rest of the world is. Yeah. About $4 per pound. So our cost a day, without saying exactly what it is, is many, many, many times the cost of conventional production today. We see a path over the next 10 years to get at or below the cost of that conventional production. So at or below $4. And then ultimately to get even more significantly below the cost of that as advances in gene editing, as advances in production and efficiency take on decades from now. There are really three key things that have to happen to get us from where we are today, which is we made some history. We're selling in Singapore to butcher shop. We made some history. Jose Andres, one of the best chefs in the world is offering this at his restaurant on a menu in Washington, DC.

But how do we get from those two historic things to something a lot more? First is you've got to make this meat in much larger vessels. It would be like if you and I started a micro brewery, we're probably not going to compete with the costs of Budweiser because they're making in much, much larger vessels. So therefore it's a lot more efficient. They're buying a lot more ingredients and it's going to be very difficult to approach their costs. So we need to get our vessels from where they are today, which is about 3,500 liters to north of 100,000 liters. That's step one.

And there's design and engineering challenges. Nothing that can't be done, but design and engineering challenges and also capital challenges to be able to spend the money to get these companies to actually make it. Second is the feed costs. So our feed costs are above a dollar a liter today. We need to get them into the tens of cents per liter, right? About 20 cents a liter. How do you do that? Well, you've got to buy a lot more feed and you also need to remove some of the components of the feed. So basically right now, Peter, we've stuffed a whole lot of stuff in there just to ensure that it's working well. A lot of it not particularly necessary in terms of amino acids and vitamins and minerals. We want to reduce the amount, buy more of it. And third, it's a metric called cell density. So for the exact same reason why

Cecilia, you know, many decades ago decided that she was cool with moving those birds indoors. Denser operations with farm animals lead to lower cost of production. Denser operations in cultivated meat production lead to lower cogs, lead to more efficient production. So we want our cell densities to climb so we can make more meat in the given period of time. So it's really the path to cost parity and below goes through bigger vessels, lower feed costs and higher cell densities. Nice. I want to talk about the name a second. So cultured meat. I get it. But I've also heard this called lab growngrown meat and stem cell-grown meat.

And you've probably heard of a few other variants as well. Are those all accurate ways to speak to this? And is cultured meat your favorite for a particular reason? So our favorite is cultivated meat. Okay. Excuse me. Cultivated meat. Yeah.

Cultivated meat is our preference. Okay. Today, my preference in the future is meat. So I'm going to drop the cultivated. I think that, so for most people out there, if you've heard of this, you probably know of it as lab grown. That's far and away the most common way of describing what this is. So what is true is there's been a lot of research in the lab. That's true to make this happen. Just like with conventional animal production,

there's been a lot of research in the lab to ultimately get to that chicken that is engineered to make as much breast meat as she possibly can. But Jose Andres, and I have our first purchase order somewhere somewhere around my house here. Congratulations. He's not buying the product from the lab. He's buying it from a production facility that is certified by the USDA. The USDA provided a grant of inspection for our production facility, not our lab. facility, not our lab. So the reason why we think at least what we do should be called cultivating, we should drop the lab is this is a legit production facility and many food products from yogurt to conventional animal protein to fruit roll-ups started in a lab. Um, but we think

it's, you know, now time to, to drop it with that said, um, you know, I always need to remember, Peter, that this is what I do every day. But my friends in Alabama are not hanging out in research labs with folks developing cell lines from cows from Japan all day long. It's a's a brand new for a lot of people, strange sounding thing. And we need to explain what the hell it is. And we need to be really open about it. And we need to be really open about what the comparison is. Um, and my hope is just like with, you know, my phone, which I would never, if my brother was holding this phone, I would never say his name is Jordan. Hey, Jordan, pass the smartphone. I just say, can you give me my phone?

My hope is eventually all these labels drop and we just call it, we just call it meat. But probably going to sell a little bit more before we get there. All right. And in fact, you call it good meat in particular. Yeah. So, and by the way, if people are interested, Josh's website is goodmeat.co and you can check it out there. All right.

I see a future in which it's vertical farms and cultivated meat that is really leveling the playing field and bringing us towards food security around the world, right? Because you don't have to worry about transportation miles, which by the way, is a good chunk of the cost, right? For a lot of meals. Can you speak to that? Yeah, it definitely is. Yeah. You don't, if you think about, um, you know, someone in North Carolina right now, and let's say a student at UNC Chapel Hill, they're going to their cafe and they're having a hamburger. That hamburger came for often, or actually say a pork sandwich, they had a pork sandwich. That pork could have been shipped from China, fed by soy and corn that was grown in Brazil, and then shipped to UNC's distribution

house owned by Cisco right before that college student who's probably studying microbiology is eating it for lunch, right? Didn't have to be that way. You could have a big cultivated meat facility right there in the research triangle, right? Who's just supplying that distribution house directly. So yeah, the way we do meat production today is just done because it was a continuation of what, you know, happened in Delaware, you know, north of 50 years ago. And I mentioned this before, but Singapore has an initiative called 30 by 30, where they're aiming to get 30% of their food produced domestically by the end of the decade.

And they see cultivated meat as being an important, in addition to vertical farms, as being an important part of that. They can own their food supply. They can control their food supply. They don't have to outsource it to another country, to another group. Which is important for the Middle East and North Africa as well, right? The whole MENA region. Let's talk about beyond chicken. Where are you going next? And what are the protein sources that could be actually turned into you know cultivated meats yeah so we're we're working on beef is our our next product and then pork is the next product after that and then we'll get into seafood probably starting with with tuna there's and i love tuna and i've stopped eating it for two reasons, right? I hate

the fact that we are decimating our oceans and killing most of the large sea life. And then I just don't want to take the mercury risk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it, it makes sense. I think a lot of people would choose that too if they took a breath and thought about it. But yeah, when you cultivate meat, it's really an unlimited kinds of protein that you can cultivate. If you want to cultivate pork or beef or lamb or tuna or salmon. One of the biggest challenges for the types of products you can make, however, are bones are difficult, right? So if you want to make a chicken bone, that's more challenging. I don't know how to do that yet. Um, probably need to find some random NASA paper and figure out maybe they've,

they've tried. I'll, I'll introduce you to, uh, to Dean Kamen. Do you know Dean? I know, I know, know of him. Yeah. So Dean is, Dean is running an organization in New Hampshire called the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute. And it's a couple of hundred million dollars, DOD, but a lot of universities and corporations. And what he was given was the challenge of generating an abundant supply of replacement organs for humans. And so he is all about process and manufacturing process. And I'm shocked I haven't introduced you, so I will do this. So what he's built is the capability to put in on one end stem cells, in fact, induced

pluripotent stem cells. And then those stem cells grow in large populations, as you well know, we talked about that earlier, and then differentiating them and then producing organs. And so the first that he created was bone ligament bone segments for surgeries, knee surgeries, ankle surgeries, using human derived stem cells, but he's going then to pediatric hearts and kidneys and lungs. And so that capability is resonant and I should definitely connect. You guys will love each other as incredible entrepreneurs. Thanks for offering that. Yeah. I'm going to ask a related question have you read the book hail mary by andy

weir um i'm reading it now okay yeah i'm reading it now yeah you know it really resonated with it really resonates with me because i think it's that kind of mindset this we just have to figure it out all hands on deck all the different disciplines necessary Get in a room and figure this shit out or else you need that mindset for this Yeah, his is the famous line from his other book. The Martian was we're gonna engineer the shit out of this Yeah, right, and I love that. Well, I'm gonna give you a spoiler alert at the very end Yeah. Right. And I love that. Well, I'm going to give you a spoiler alert at the very end. The the hero finds himself on an alien planet that has, let's say, say, life that's incompatible with human digestion. And so he at the end discloses the fact that he's living off of me burgers, me burgers.

Right. So the idea that you can sample your own stem cells well and grow your own protein products i read that he probably read that same nasa paper so i've often thought about that it's it's a little funny strange but still hilarious um going back to what we were saying earlier um you were talking about where this is going for for different uh different protein sources yeah yeah the yeah so bones are a challenge and also the more highly structured a product is so for example a steak is more challenging to do than ground beef a pork chop is more challenging to do than minced pork um a chicken thigh is more challenging to do than a chicken breast. So we're starting off with simpler products. So with nuggets, with chicken strips, with patties, with sausage, with minced pork, we want to build up the technology, the scale to be able to do that.

And then eventually get to these more highly structured products. to do that and then eventually get to these more highly structured, highly structured products. And along the way, really, you know, work to educate people about what the heck this is and why it, you know, and why it matters. Hey everybody, this is Peter. A quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the crisis news network I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology, how entrepreneurs are solving the

world's grand challenges, what the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week, I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of news you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus.com backslash blog and learn more. Now back to the episode. You know, I love when I'm trying to guide, inspire entrepreneurs, I say, listen, I want you to find your massive transformative purpose and then

the moonshots that are on that canvas of your purpose. And I feel like your first moonshot was what you did with Eat Just and the monk fruit and creating a new form of plant-derived protein. And then this is the second moonshot you're taking on that canvas of transforming how you feed the world in a more compelling, healthier, civil fashion. I love storytelling. civil fashion. I love storytelling. And would you mind taking a second and talking about your storytelling philosophy inside of your company and tell it to the perspective of teaching other entrepreneurs out there how important it is and why you technology perspective, you can't take the just primal human out of the modern human. And storytelling is just wound up in our DNA. And other than I just think this acknowledgement that it just is so very human, I think about, you know, the things that have really stuck with me.

And it's often when someone that I respect is telling me a story that is visceral, that is emotional, that is concrete, that sometimes has contrast in it. All these things, not only have I seen resonate with me in my life, but then when I've looked into the evidence of it, is very much evidence-based. When you share authentic stories that have emotion, that have specific details, that have something that's unexpected or something that's contrasted, it is just much more likely that it will resonate with another human animal that you're talking to. A good example of that is there's been a lot of research in how organizations will raise money for folks that are living under a dollar a day. And you can say that over a billion people are living under a dollar a day and you should donate to help them. Or you can say there is a young girl named Rebecca.

She lives in a township in Liberia. She likes to play soccer at lunch. She eats corn for dinner. She wants to be a musician when she grows up. And you should consider helping her. a musician when she grows up and you should consider helping her. And that is just so much more effective, um, than, than the big number. And I think, uh, you know, the challenge and, you know, I still got to work on this is you still got to talk about the numbers. You still got to talk about, you know, these bigger meta issues, but it just has to be done with an understanding that, uh, you know, we're

not, we're not just talking to AI agents for now. We're talking to primal human beings who are hardwired to listen to each other around the fire. And that just can't be forgotten. Do you actually take the time with your team to teach them storytelling? And do you create stories as an entrepreneurial team? Or do you share the stories and allow others to tell them? Can you go a little bit into that? Because I think it's such a powerful element. And your point is absolutely right.

Our brains are wired for storytelling around a campfire and and we we we lose interest when we hear about big numbers that we can't relate to we relate to single individuals relate to an individual in our tribe we relate to an emotional experience we are emotional animals but yet when we're coming at this, we either talk about dollars or big numbers, but it doesn't create a visceral connection. And I just, you know, when I asked you on this podcast, it's like the number one thing I want people to get out of this is the power of storytelling because you do such a beautiful job. And I learned a lot of this from you and also from Tony Robbins and others as I hear them giving

compelling stories. So let's take it to the next step here. What's your advice for entrepreneurs here? Yeah. So I, we definitely on the, on the, the, the sales team, I talked to them a lot about, you know, when you're, you know, you're selling cultivated meat in talk about, there's this young kid named Vadip in Singapore. he's the first person to try it and talk about what the deep said um talk about his reaction to it talk about a young girl named kaya who was the first to eat it at this restaurant called 1880 but these are real stories these are real stories yeah yeah and you're not you're not making them up they're real stories but you're giving them you're you're painting them them in full spectrum color and details.

Yeah. So I share with them, use these real examples to communicate what this is. So cultivated meat doesn't come off as this, you know, abstraction of technology. Cultivated meat is much more than cell lines growing in a stainless steel vessel, right? It's a guy named Mr. Liu in Singapore who was initially hesitant to put cultivated meat on his menu to make chicken curry rice. And then his daughter said, dad, give this a try. And then he reluctantly said, all right, I'll put it on the menu. And then Mr. Lou had a line out of his, out the block of people wanting chicken curry cultivated chicken

curry rice. So I really emphasize the importance of sharing these stories with our sales team and with anyone who's speaking externally. And then I just think I'm naturally doing it a lot. So people, you know, people pick up on it. One thing we just do at our headquarters now, Peter, is all our offices in place for the team to meet are named after something that has a story behind it. So for example, our largest conference room is named Mr. Lose. It's named after that dad who's convinced by his daughter. The place where I work is called Reeves Drive. And that's the story of how I founded the company on a street called Reeves Drive in Southern California. Yeah. So it's become part of our, you know, a part of our culture. But, you know, if it's not, if it's not real, if it's not authentic, the storytelling can land really flat and be counterproductive. connects connects their heart and their mind with you um as with every entrepreneurial venture and i have had my my uh full set of them there are massive challenges failures recommitments and then taking a shot at again do you have some stories to you know sort of incentivize people to you know pick up up at 2am

in the morning and keep going here? Well, I mean, we have almost, I've lost count of the times that we've almost run out of money over the course of the last 10 plus years. I think I've lost count of the number of people that I thought were vital at the time who are really talented, who decided to leave. And in the moment, I thought, you know, that is going to change our trajectory entirely. But then we regrouped, found other talented people, you know, and moved on. I haven't lost count of, you know, the number of term sheets that I thought we were going to have that, you know, didn't, didn't, uh, didn't actually end up transpiring, uh, in the end. And I, I think I've, uh, you go through enough of these things where you sort of just have the expectation

that a lot of shit is going to happen. And the best way to deal with all the shit that's going to happen is put your head down and just keep walking through it. And, you know, it reminds me, I was thinking about like a good metaphor for this and back to Liberia during the rainy season in Liberia, if you see like white people who are visiting Liberia during the rainy season in Liberia if you see like white people who are visiting Liberia for the first time it's sunny and then a second later it's storming down on them and they're you know freaking out got to take cover running around and then you look at Liberians and they just put their head down and they just walk right through it because they know it's rainy season. And for me, it's always rainy season. I don't know when the storm

is going to come, but it's going to come. And I'm just going to have to keep walking through it. And I've got to just know that you work on something that's important and meaningful and you try to do it the right way. All you can do is try to increase the probability that you you work to on something that's important and meaningful and you try to do it the right way all you can do is try to increase the probability that you get it right and that's the you know that's the way to that's the way to go about it but not being surprised when the storm comes is a really important part I think of being an entrepreneur, you're going to have some crazy shit happen to you, you're going to have people who you care about, who you think are vital, who

will leave you, you're gonna have people that you think should be so loyal, and then they're not, you're going to have investors pull their term sheets. That's the deal. Like that, those that is the cost of doing something on your own. That's the cost of doing something on your own. That's the cost of doing something that ultimately can be really important. And it's the cost of going big. It's a lot easier to go incremental. But when you're trying to change the world, it's hard work.

And I think people have this fanciful point of view that they'll look at you now, they'll look at what you've built and, oh man, Josh is so lucky. He's really smart. He's got an amazing team. And look at this overnight success. And little do they know all the trials and tribulations along the way. I mean, I think it's true for every major entrepreneur. I don't know anybody who's not gone through these ups and downs, right? You know, the conversations with Elon around going through bankruptcy and borrowing money and going through divorce and leveraging, you know, everything for Tesla and SpaceX back in 2008, going from nothing to the wealthiest person in a decade's time and uh and just it's it's

extraordinary um would you say it's that emotional connection that that deep emotional purpose that keeps you moving forward um i mean this is insane sometimes. Yeah. I just really, I really think that is, I have a lot of fun in doing what I do. I find it really creative. There's ego that's associated with it. All that's a part of it. But like at the bottom, like of all this, I want us to create food that is causing a whole less harm. I really want that. And I think

putting my head down and getting through a lot of this pain that has happened that I know will happen in the future, um, is for something that I, I, I deeply, when no one else is listening, when no one else is watching, when it's just me, uh, when I'm not trying to impress anyone. I really believe that that matters, that we shouldn't cause so much pain to ourselves and to animals and to our planet just because we really want to have bacon. Just because we really want to enjoy chicken nuggets at a football game. It doesn't have to be that way. So that, that more than anything gets me through it. Nice. The other thing you have to get through is regulations. And man, oh man, I mean, there, I don't think people, entrepreneurs, if you have a chance to choose building something in an unregulated industry versus a regulated industry like the FDA or the FAA. So how did you do it? I mean, I assume that there was a tremendous amount of not invented here.

You're threatening a trillion dollar industry. Maybe the industry doesn't recognize how big the transformation could be but can you talk about the regulatory process here and what was involved yes so we uh so we received approval to sell in singapore in late 2020 actually on thanksgiving how long did that take you it's about a two and a half year process yeah so we submitted our application waited for about two and a half years going back and forth with this agency called the Singapore Food Authority on all the questions that you would expect where do you get the cell how do you develop the cell line what's happening in this

vessel how do you convert did you bring them lunch in a did you did you bring the SFA sort of chicken sandwiches and said here try it yeah we eventually did we eventually got you got them and uh and and showed it to them uh and then uh yeah after this process that understandably they're trying to wrap their arms around right it's not we didn't go into it expecting that regulators are going to automatically get this. So they asked a lot of good questions. Singapore is one of the, I think, the most pragmatic evidence-based regulators out there. We got approval on Thanksgiving Day 2020. Then we won on the sell on December 20th, 2020 to a group of young people, including that young kid I mentioned, 2020 to a group of young people, including that young kid I mentioned, who were the very first table, the very first humans to experience cultivated meat ever in a commercial setting.

And then we, in parallel, we had submitted an application to the FDA. And that was about a two-year-long process. Also, very similar questions to the Singapore Food Authority. Where do you get the cell? What's the feed made up of? How do we know it's safe? And then in the United States, it's not only the FDA that needs to give you clearance, but also the USDA. So in America, it's jointly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The FDA handles everything from the initial cell to what happens in the vessel. And then the USDA handles everything after it comes out of the vessel and it's served. So then we worked with the USDA to get what's called our grant of inspection that was a final step in this long regulatory process that allowed us to sell.

But we had to build up a team of people, Peter, who had gotten food products approved, who had gotten pharmaceutical products approved, who understood how to write a dossier, the application that you submit that lays out all the elements in the process, who understood how to you know answer questions appropriately, who understood how to in an emotionally intelligent way work with these agencies, meaning you can't be pinging them constantly, hey do you have an update, hey do you have an update, right, how do you work with them thoughtfully, and yeah we'll have to do the same thing with beef and pork and, you know, whatever else we, we decide to do, uh, to do next, but hopefully it'll happen a little bit faster because the agencies have more, um, you know, experience, um, uh, with, you know, wrapping their arms around applications like this. around applications like this. And do you, is it easy once you've gotten chicken to get beef next? In other words, do these things topple quicker when you've gotten one through the chute? Well, the process, so the process is very similar. What's different is you might have different, a different feed composition for the beef than you would chicken. But the steps are the same. I think to be determined whether regulators will take as long

with beef as they did with chicken, my sense is it'll go faster simply because they've done it before. Right now they have people within the agency that have seen applications, have asked questions, have seen what an appropriate answer is and what, you know, what they expect. So my hope is it goes a bit faster. Let's talk about some predictions here. I know it's super challenging always, or you don't have to call them predictions. You can call them aspirations. What should we see, you know, by the end of this decade, by the end of 2040 from yourself and or from the industry? And how many other players are there right now in this industry? Yeah, so there are about 100 companies that are cultivating meat in some way, whether in the smallest of lab scale or in the case of us, still a very small,

but a production facility. Most of them are the United States, but you've got a number of them in Israel and Western Europe, in China, in Singapore. I'll start with the long term. if we get this right, if the industry gets this right, the majority of meat that will be made on January 1st, 2040, where we hopefully can have another podcast together, will be cultivated instead of slaughtered. And that is the goal, that we will be able to say on that day, the majority of meat is cultivated instead of slaughtered. Across all meats. Across all meats. Whereas today, we can say the majority of meat produced is not only slaughtered, but slaughtered in the most industrialized settings.

So that is where we want to get by January 1st, 2040. industrialized settings. So that is where we want to get by January 1st, 2040. What I see in 2023, 24 is very small scale production. And when I say very small scale, just to make it concrete for folks, we just delivered two pounds of chicken to Jose Andres a couple of days ago. We had someone fly two pounds of chicken, deliver it to Jose Andres' team, and then they're going to be serving the public here in the next couple of days. So that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about volume. So it's that that kind of hopefully a little bit more than that but very small scale production at least for the next two three years now yeah you're gonna say yeah i was gonna say you know by the end of the year are you up to tens of pounds are you up to you yeah we'll probably we'll probably we'll probably be up to tens of pounds by the by the end of the year um our our facility today maxed out, has the ability to do 100,000 pounds a year, fully maxed out. But we're not maxing it out today because we're just in a single restaurant. And it's more about optimizing our process and getting sort of the public impact of selling it as opposed to trying you know, trying to sell as much as we can, because after all, we're losing money on every, every part. We make it up on volume. Yeah.

But really the next inflection point will be when our company or others move to truly large scale production. And companies use these terms, you know, some company will say, you know, we're, And companies use these terms, you know, some company will say, you know, we're in a pilot plant or we're in a demo facility. We're in a small scale production facility. Those are just synonyms for not producing a lot. It's all less than 100,000 pounds. But to get up to millions, tens of millions of pounds, you got to get in these bigger vessels. And that's not going to happen for at least another two years at least you know when i look at other industries that are in the process of being disrupted you know you

look at the automotive industry uh producing internal combustion cars and then they start seeing in the distance the glimmer of evs and then now they've completely flipped over to EVs. Right. Would you imagine there will be a time where Tysons and Purdue and the other large chicken farmers are going to come in and say, can we convert? And what's the time frame for that? Because I think ultimately they're the ones that can help you scale this with capital and distribution. Yeah. I definitely see that happening for the same reason that, you know, our chicken farmer friends, Cecilia in Delaware back in the day, move the chickens indoors because it's important when people look at car companies back in the day sort of sticking to gas-powered cars or animal protein companies sticking to conventional production. Just take the emotion out of it and realize that from their point of view, they think it is the most efficient way to make the thing that enables that company and themselves to make money. to make the thing that enables that company and themselves to make money. And if you take that layer and you say, okay, fair enough,

will these companies eventually see cultivated meat as being a more efficient way to make the same amount of meat? I think the answer is yes. And therefore, I think you'll definitely see Tyson and Purdue and these other companies moving to it because it just makes rational economic sense to do so. More profitable for them and better for the planet. But they need, just like, you know, Ford needed Tesla to scare the shit out of them. Big animal protein companies need young companies to take the bet to, you know, rock the boat a bit, to, you know, rock the boat a bit, show them that cultivated chicken can taste like chicken and an amazing chef like Jose Andres can serve it in one of his restaurants in D.C. that we can scale up.

And I think right now, big animal protein companies are looking at cultivated meat and they're trying to figure out they're not quite sure they're trying to figure out, is this something that I'm going to need to worry about in the next 10 years? Like while I'm still working here, or is this something that like whoever replaces me when I retire is going to have to worry about. Um, and I think the more we and other companies can show them, no, no, no, it's something you need to worry about. I think the more that we'll be able to partner with them, right. And the more that we'll be able to leverage their scale to make this happen a lot faster. We partner with a great company called ADM. ADM is one of the biggest suppliers of feed to the animal

agriculture business. They feed the world. They feed the world and they invested in us and they want to develop feed for cultivated meat that enables them to use their capabilities on the feed side to do you know ultimately to do it in a more efficient way josh as we close this out uh you know these numbers by heart i want to i want to share with everybody again those numbers about the realities of the food industry and why creating cultivated meat is so critical for humanity do you mind running through those one more time yeah so on this planet today if you were flying over and doing a surveillance of how we the human animals using the planet you would find that a third of this planet is dedicated to not feeding me and you and my mom and my brother but dedicated to feeding the farm animals

wheat a third of it primarily soy and corn in a more concrete way that means there's a dude in a boulder bulldozer somewhere in the amazon rainforest clear-cutting that biodiverse area to plant soy and corn to feed a chicken in North Carolina that you're then eating for lunch. Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transportation sources combined. It's hard because when you're eating bacon for breakfast, you don't see fumes coming off that bacon. But when a tree is not there to suck in energy, to suck in carbon, it has an impact. And again, it's more impactful than all the transportation sources combined. The way we farm animals today, by continuing the legacy of my friend in Delaware 50 years ago is that they're packed body to body.

And when you pack living things body to body, you need to layer antibiotics into their food and often they get sick. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes when they get sick, it spills over to our families like avian flu or a mad cow disease and other zoonotic diseases. And then finally, the very simple fact, we're smart enough that we don't need to create all this harm just to enjoy all this meat. It doesn't have to be that way. just to enjoy all this meat. It doesn't have to be that way. Growing chickens, all muscle, barely able to stand up for just 45 days to be slaughtered

in a cruel and inhumane fashion. You know, it's interesting. There's been a lot of discussion in the AI world about being specious,, viewing AIs that could become sentient and intelligent, different from humans, and why would we give them rights? But we do that with animals all the time, right? We view a dolphin or a whale, and we must preserve them and not harm them. But we don't to a pig or a chicken. We're specious in that fashion. And I find that absolutely fascinating. Yeah, no, that's right. And what I think what we often do, Peter, is that when, when you create an abstraction and you know, a chicken nugget is like the ultimate abstraction. Just a quick story about how even affects me. I visited a chicken production facility in, in Northern Germany. And as much as I know about the issues

of chicken production, they took me through the chickens and the slaughter and then the chicken nugget. At the end of the process, I saw the chicken nugget and I was hungry. And your mouth watered. I was really hungry. I didn't look at it as this nugget of cruelty. I looked at it as like, like, damn, are they going to give us a sample? As much as I know about it, right? In abstraction hides cruelty. It hides, you know, the bulldozer and that amazon rainforest right it hides the transmission of avian fluid it hides it um and i think that um i think removing as hard as it is for us to remove that abstraction and remember that that pig or that chicken that is making that nugget

isn't necessarily more intelligent than your dog who's sitting over there watching you as you're on you know another zoom call um and it's hard for us to get there because we're so busy you know we don't take a moment to stop and ask ourselves these questions. But I think if we did, maybe we wouldn't even need a cultivating meat company. You know, Peter, we just realized that we can make those decisions ourselves and create a better world at the same time. Well, Josh, yes, we should eat beans. Yes. We should hold plants. And having said all that, thank you to you and your team at goodmeat.co for all that you're doing. Everybody, please check out goodmeat.co. Uh,

Josh, you're an extraordinary entrepreneur. I'm blessed to call you a friend. And thank you for this incredible moonshot and this journey. And holy cow, how far you've come. And yeah, you've reached orbit. Now it's time to hit the moon and go to Mars next. Everybody, excited to taste it myself. And please check it out, goodmeat.co. And of course, the related company Eat Just. Thank you all, Josh. Thank you for your support, your extraordinary work.

Thanks, Peter.