Alain Guillot

Life, Leadership, and Money Matters

Becoming vegan

Paul Shapiro, Trailblazing the food industry

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 Shapiro
Paul Shapiro and his friend the chicken
Clean Meat book
Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World
The Better Meat Co.
The Better Meat Co Website
Paul Shapiro, TEDx Boston, November 2022
  • Paul is based in Sacramento, California.
  • Paul became vegan about 31 years ago (1993) after watching some videos depicting farmed animals.
The cruelty of animal farming

Paul’s dog Eddie

Eddie and Paul

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.

Olympian Carl Lewis

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.

Eating at a vegan restaurant in Colombia with my friend Cheryl

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.

Horses used as transportation engines

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.

Whale

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

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.

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