Paul Shapiro is the author of the national bestseller Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He’s also the CEO of The Better Meat Co., a five-time TEDx speaker (2023 talk here!), the host of the Business for Good Podcast, and a long-time leader in food sustainability. In 2023, he was named as a Most Admired CEO by the Sacramento Business Journal.
- Paul is based in Sacramento, California.
- Paul became vegan about 31 years ago (1993) after watching some videos depicting farmed animals.
Paul’s dog Eddie
After watching some animal farming videos, he said:
What if that was my dog?
Paul Shapiro
If I wouldn’t want it to happen to my dog, why would I contribute to the torture of other animals? A cow, a chicken, or a pig. As a result, Paul decided to become a vegetarian.
Paul began to inform himself about veganism and he start following Olympian Carl Lewis, who was also vegan.
Some people watch a video once and they decide to become vegan, but others, are totally incentivized.
Paul suggest spending some time with other vegans so that you will have some kind of social support. Go to Vegan restaurants, etc.
For hundreds of years, we relied on horses for transportation. It not because we cared about the horse’s warfare that we stopped using them; it’s because Henry Ford started mass producing automobiles, a more efficient way of transportation, that people stopped using horses.
At one time people depended on whale hunting to get oil for their lamps. The the technology allowed us to use kerosine, and later on, electricity. Now we view whales as majestic creatures worth protecting.
Fellow creatures in this planet don’t exist for us, but with us.
Paul Shapiro
The hypocrisy of climate activism. They demand policy changes to decrease the the use of petroleum products, but at at the same time they will not reduce the consumption of meat.
Greta Thunberg, was in Montreal to take part in a global march for climate action, addressed a crowd estimated at half a million. She called for continued protests, until world leaders agree to take concrete action. After her march, many of the protesters went to the local burger join to eat hamburgers and hot dogs.
People like to point the finger to oil companies and coal industries and have a hard time recognizing that they are part of the problem.
People like eating meat. Meat consumption is going up is China, Brazil, Mexico, etc. We need to give them a satisfying meat alternative.
Laboratory meat is much expensive than regular exploited animal meat.
Exploited animal meat is subsidized by different governments.
Most of the clean energy technology is coming from China or Taiwan. The United States is falling behind.
In Singapore, one start-up is making milk in a lab, without the need for cows, humans or any mammal, for that matter.
While, lawmakers in Florida and Alabama have made it a criminal act to manufacture and sell lab-grown meat in their states.
The Better Meat Co. produces a fermented protein called Rhiza mycoprotein that is the main ingredient to produce laboratory meat. The Better Meat Co is accepting investors as of this post.