Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World

Paul Shapiro gives you a “captivating” (John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market) front-row seat for the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat—real meat—without the animals.

Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our species’ desire for meat. But with a growing global popula­tion and demand for meat, eggs, dairy, leather, and more, raising such massive numbers of farm animals is woefully inefficient and takes an enormous toll on the planet, public health, and certainly the animals themselves.

But what if we could have our meat and eat it, too? The next great scientific revolution is underway—“a future where the cellular agricultural revolution helps lower rates of foodborne illness, greatly improves environmental sustainability, and allows us to continue to enjoy the food we love” (Kathleen Sebelius, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services).

Enter clean meat—real, actual meat grown (or brewed!) from animal cells—as well as other clean foods that ditch animal cells altogether and are simply built from the molecule up. Whereas our ancestors domesticated wild animals into livestock, today we’re beginning to domesticate their cells, leaving the animals out of the equation. From one single cell of a cow, you could feed an entire village. And “in this important book that could just save your life” (Michael Greger, MD, author of How Not to Die), the story of this coming second domestica­tion is anything but tame.

When Paul Shapiro took his first bite of clean meat in 2014, more humans had gone into space than had eaten real meat grown outside an animal. In addition to being among the world’s first clean meat consumers, Paul is a four-time TEDx speaker, the co-host of the Business for Good Podcast, the CEO of The Better Meat Co., and longtime leader in food sustainability. He’s published hundreds of articles in publications ranging from daily newspapers to academic journals. Paul lives in Sacramento, California with his wife Toni Okamoto, author and founder of Plant-Based on a Budget. His first book, Clean Meat, is a Washington Post bestseller, and has been translated into numerous other languages. You can read more about Paul’s work and contact him at Paul-Shapiro.com.