Bruce Friedrich on the Future of Meat: Plant-Based, Cultivated, and the Race to Feed the World

I would've said it was sugar, but you know, I would say meat is way up there. Um, he's actually a complete pioneer in attempting to change the way the world eats. He has accomplished a lot since we last talked to him, and so I'm super excited. Welcome, Bruce.

Bruce Friedrich: Thanks so much, Mariann. I'm super excited to be here.

Mariann Sullivan: Before we get to that, just a quick reminder about the Our Hen House podcasts, Rising Anxieties on Tuesdays, The Hen Report on Thursdays, the long form interview, which is this, on Fridays. Bonus for Flock members comes out on Mondays and we're a podcast and we're on YouTube. So, uh, please subscribe and hit like wherever you listen, and even if you don't listen, subscribe and hit like.

Uh, so Bruce, before we get to the book, I, I imagine most people who are listening kind of know a bit about The Good Food Institute, but can you just, uh, tell people who haven't heard of it or have heard, or like may have heard a little about it, but are not nearly as up to date as they should be on all the things that you're doing and the kind of scope and breadth of the work?

So we know where we're starting from.

Bruce Friedrich: Uh, sure. Thank you very much, Mariann. I'm, uh, such a fan of the podcast and really delighted and honored to be on. Um, so The Good Food Institute, we are a nonprofit organization. Uh, we're basically a nonprofit science think tank. Uh, we have a little north of 240 full-time team members. They're spread across six organizations.

So there's the Good Food Institute in the US, um, and then GFI India, Israel, Brazil, Asia Pacific, and Europe. It's really focused on the science of making meat from plants, um, and cultivated meat, growing actual animal meat directly from small samplings of animal muscle or animal fat. Yeah, I mean that's, that's basically it.

We're a, we're a science think tank that, uh, produces report, produces science, does a lot of scientific analysis, um, and works with governments to understand the value of plant-based meat and cultivated meat, uh, to things like economic growth and food security. Um, and then working with other NGOs around the world to understand the value of alternative meats to things like hunger alleviation, the range of environmental benefits, antimicrobial resistance, pandemic risk prevention, um, and those sorts of things.

Mariann Sullivan: So one thing I think people might not realize, 'cause I, I mean I guess I sort of realized it, but, but how totally future oriented you are. I mean, I think you say that, that you don't consider your mission to convince people to be eating plant-based meat right now. That's not really who you are, there are other organizations doing that.

Is that correct? Like, have I stated that correctly?

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, I mean, I think we do a little bit of that. We're enthusiastic about the early adopters, uh, but the plurality of our team members around the world are scientists and, um, our number one goal is a maximally robust scientific ecosystem, uh, focused on the scientific and engineering challenges of plant-based and cultivated meat. Um, and so the way we think you get there is you convince governments to put, you know, billions of dollars into helping us solve the scientific and engineering challenges. So our global battle cry is that governments should be funding this work. So when we were looking at the areas of the world to operate in, we only had two questions that we asked. Um, the first one was, does this government fund a lot of science for reasons that alternative meats solve? And the second was, do they have world class scientific institutions? So if you read our annual reports or anything that tells you, you know, why we're in a specific country, um, it won't say anything about, you know, the number of consumers there. Um, it will talk about the scientific ecosystem and the pitch to the governments that they should be funding this science. So, I mean, Singapore and Israel, um, are tiny countries, uh, so we would not be there if they didn't have a huge food security reason to be funding the science and engineering of plant-based and cultivated meat, um, and world class scientific institutions. So it's, it's not, not at all. Uh, but it's definitely, uh, not, you know, not one of our primary focuses.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, and I really wanna get into those issues, especially the food security issues, which I think people listening may not be as aware of some of the other reasons, uh, to adopt a plant-based diet. There are so many, you can really pick and choose and, and the food security issues are, I think are one of the ones I'm the most naive about.

I just wanna say also in setting the tone, kind of, that I really like your optimistic assessment of, of recent setbacks. 'Cause you know, I'm sick of reading articles in The Atlantic about how plant-based is dead. There are no more vegans. It's all over. Like, like, and I try, I have... everyone listening knows, or if you've listened regularly, I always say, you know, uh, back in, back in the aughts, uh, there were a lot of companies going into the internet and they all failed except for one.

And that was Amazon. And from what we hear, they're, they're doing well. Uh, so you gotta take a long-term look, but I'm in a very weak position to be making that argument. Uh, can you just give us a little bit of your spiel as to why it's way too early to despair, even though there have of course been setbacks.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah. I mean if you look back 10 years ago, right now, there was literally no Impossible burger. There was no Beyond Burger. Um, none of the plant-based products were anywhere near, um, satisfying meat eaters. Veggie burgers were really veggie first, um, and burger kind of not at all. Um, nuggets were even further away from anything that looks like, uh, taste parity.

On the cultivated meat side, 10 years ago right now, um, in the history of the entire world, uh, $3 million had been raised by one company. No other company had raised a dime. Um, now we're 10 years along and we have a long way to go, uh, but we've made a lot of progress. Um, 10 years ago there had been one scientific conference for cultivated meat and zero scientific conferences for plant-based meat. Um, now there are literally dozens all over the world, um, every single year. Uh, 10 years ago, there had been four scientific papers on cultivated meat ever published in history. Um, now there are about 170 per year. Um, six years ago, no government other than Israel and Singapore had funded or started a regulatory process to approve, um, cultivated meat. Um, now more than 20 governments, all of the governments where GFI operates, are doing significant funding and consider this to be, um, one of their food security priorities. Um, 10 years ago there had been, I think seven patents, something like that. Through the end of 2017, I think there were seven patents in cultivated meat. Um, now there are 1500 patents.

Um, until 2023, there was a total of one third-party sort of verification of what it is that we're talking about, about alternative proteins and their value, uh, for the range of environmental and, and global health, and hunger and malnutrition as an intervention. Um, now we've got the World Bank, the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, a couple of reports from McKinsey, Nobel Laureate in Economics, and his Quebec Commission at the University of Chicago, the UN Environment Program. Um, and all of that's in the last three years. Uh, the, those third party verifications that I just mentioned. So, um, it, it just, as you, as you pointed out, it's not an indictment of a technology to say that the private sector portion of the technology is struggling. Um, so you have your example, um, from circa the year 2000 where the NASDAQ lost 80% of its value, um, because internet commerce stocks, the.com bust. Um, more than half of those companies went outta business.

Amazon stock fell from over $215 a share, uh, to less than six. So it fell by more than 97%. Um, pets.com obviously went outta business. It was sort of the poster child, uh, for whoever thought internet commerce could work. Um, and people were ruthless. And now Chewy is worth, um, more than 30 times as much as pets.com was ever worth. Um, or you flash back a hundred years before that, in the first 10 years of automobile innovation, more than 500 companies went outta business. The president of Princeton University at the time was Woodrow Wilson, in 1906. Um, he said that automobiles will never be more than a play thing for the idle rich. Um, and in both cases, the reason that the commentaries were so disparaging, um, for automobiles, they were really hard to start. You had to be very strong. They were breaking down constantly, which meant, meant you had to be very mechanically inclined. Um, and they were really expensive. And people just couldn't imagine that Henry Ford would come along in 1908, solve those three problems, and 20 years later, the automobile industry would be the largest industry in America.

Um, or with dot coms. You know, most people were still plugging into landlines. People were not yet familiar, uh, with the idea of ordering things online. Um, you know, Jeff Bezos hadn't sort of revolutionized what it looks like to be insanely customer focused, um, and to grow and slash prices, et cetera. Um, and so people just have this idea still. Um, you know, you look at the articles that have been unkind about plant-based meat, if you actually read them closely, none of them are talking to scientists. All of them boil down to the products don't yet taste good enough and they cost too much. Like that is literally the underlying message of all of them. Um, and so that really is like saying about automobiles in 1900, well, they're really hard to start and they keep breaking down and they're too expensive. Um, or with internet commerce in 2000, gosh, this is never gonna catch on because right now it hasn't caught on already. Um, that's just really the nature of innovation.

And, um, on the science side and the government support side, um, we really have made tremendous progress. And that's not to say it's gonna succeed, uh, but it is to say that, uh, what I try to do with the book is to basically, um, dispute both the undue pessimism and also the undue optimism.

So I think is true, is that the science and engineering can work. What I also think is true is that it's gonna be expensive and hard. Um, but what I focus on in chapters nine and 10 is the massive self-interested economic and food security incentives of governments, uh, because this is right in line with stuff that they already prioritize and are, um, spending on. Um, so really, I mean, even if you just look at pandemic risk, uh, the amount of money that's gonna cost to shift in this direction, is the tiniest fraction of the amount of money the global economy lost on COVID-19. And COVID-19 was not that, you know, the, it wasn't that transmissible, it wasn't that deadly. It really, I mean, it, it sent more than a hundred million people into dire poverty who wouldn't have been there otherwise. But it was like way lighter than most of the experts predicted in the developing world. It could have been so much worse.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, and we, we got the vaccine like instantly, which, you know, really changed, changed the trajectory.

Bruce Friedrich: Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein tell the story, um, of the mRNA vaccine, it is fascinating from the perspective of a scientific innovation that nobody thought was possible, that nobody would fund. Uh, the woman who was responsible for that, you know, sort of pioneering work, um, had basically been relegated to like PA status or something and she just couldn't get any funding, uh, to do the work. Um, and it ended up being, I think if I memory serves like some startup or something, I think Moderna like, just sort of picked it off a shelf and decided, yeah, we'll try this. Um, and, um, you know, there, there are just so many stories like that. Um, penicillin's another really good example, sat on a shelf for, didn't sit on a shelf, but like couldn't get funding for 13 years.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I didn't know that penicillin story. That was fascinating.

I kind of thought it, you know, they invented it. They just, you know, they were like, yay. And then, then they cured everybody. It was, I had no idea, like, it sat around for that long. So there's a, I mean, it makes the point that there are a lot of elements that go into this.

So of course things are not automatically going to happen. But there is also that, I guess it's sort of like a tipping point kind of thing, that once it starts and it works, it can happen very fast.

Bruce Friedrich: Oh yeah. Shockingly, shockingly fast. I

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, think of phones.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah. I mean, we went from, uh, 25 years ago or 26 years ago, every phone plugged into a wall. Um, and now the va, you know, like very close to a hundred percent, if not a

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: know, very, very, very recently. And

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Do you ever read novels from like a while ago and think, well, why didn't they just call? And then you're like, oh, right, they didn't have a telephone.

Bruce Friedrich: yeah, no, exactly. I mean, yeah, there are just many examples. Penicillin's another example, like once the, you know, the Department of Defense in the US. Um, decided it was gonna solve the final tech challenges that nobody else would fund, um, and scale it up, boom. Um, and, uh, you know, automobiles are another, yeah, just so many examples.

Once you work out the kinks, really can just shoot up the S-curve. Um, and that's, uh, that's, uh, I think certainly my expectation. I argue in the book that once you get to price and taste parity, uh, for cultivated meat in particular, um, it's gonna, it will shoot up the S-curve.

Mariann Sullivan: So, uh, we did mention that we're gonna go into food insecurity, which is one of those issues that, uh, you know, I don't wanna talk about problems the whole time because I think most of our listeners know most of the problems, but food insecurity is an interesting, is a really interesting, uh, uh, topic in this sense, not only because, I mean, we all kind of know that food insecurity is an issue. But how bad is it?

How bad is it likely to become? How will an alternative proteins change that? And is this, I mean, is this, governments are really something... I mean, I, I would think that governments would worry about this a lot. Our government doesn't seem to be terribly concerned at the moment, but, uh, feeding people, that's bottom line for a successful government, or a survivable government.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, and I should clarify that food security, um, is sort of an umbrella term and it means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. So you will hear people refer to food security, um, and what they're talking about is hunger and malnutrition. Um, and true, that is a, a food security issue.

Um, that's not the one, that's not the one, uh, that governments are like super worried about. Um, the one that governments are super, unless you're like, you know, India or a country that's actually, um, suffering from hunger and malnutrition. Uh, but the reason that Singapore, Israel, Korea, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, um, when you talk about food security with those governments, it's really food self-sufficiency.

And all of those governments are agriculture poor, basically. Uh, which means they're importing a lot of their food. And, you know, look at what's happening with The Straight of Hormuz right now and fertilizer prices skyrocketing. Look at what happened, um, at the beginning of the Ukraine war and front page news, um, all over the world, the idea that, um, Ukraine's 50 million metric tons of grain, um, were going to be disrupted by that war.

Well then think about the fact that we feed 1.4 billion metric tons of grain to chickens and farmed fish and other farm animals. So if you are importing as much food as Korea, Japan, and the other countries that I just named are importing, um, that is an incredibly precarious place to be. Um, China is not as, as food insecure from a percentage basis as some of the countries that I just named. But if you flash back to when China joined the WTO, they were a net food exporter and they have been going backward every single year since. Um, and that's really because they solved their hunger and malnutrition problem by increasing incomes and GDP. Uh, but what that means is that people are eating more and more meat. So if you read circa 2000 commentaries, nobody thought, not nobody thought, uh, Lester Brown thought. Uh, so Lester Brown was saying, you know, I think he got ridiculed for it, really for saying when China joins the WTO, you know, watch their food imports skyrocket, they are going to be a net food importer. Um, and people were, people were pretty, um, negative to him about that. And it's happened every single year. They're now the world's largest importer of every kind of meat. Uh, far and away, Brazil's largest, um, recipient of soy. All of that soy is fed to chickens and pigs and farmed fish. Um, and it just keeps going up.

So this is one of the reasons that China, um, is leaning in on alternative proteins. And this is really our pitch, um, to China and kind of governments around the world. And then if you're talking about someplace that is already a, you know, massive agricultural producer, um, like the United States or Brazil, uh, then when you're talking about food security, you're talking about food systems resilience.

And the fact that, you know, the, the infa... the thing that makes meat problematic from an environmental standpoint also makes it a colossal opportunity, um, from a profit standpoint and also from a food systems resilience and food

Mariann Sullivan: I love, I I love that messaging that, that, that just makes so much sense. Everything that's wrong with it is, is an opportunity.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, and like, you know, none of the corporations, and you know, like the governments recognize that if you have to grow massive amounts of crops and ship them to a feed mill and operate a feed mill and ship the feed to the farm and operate the farm and ship the animals to the slaughterhouse and operate the slaughterhouse, like all those extra stages of production are an inefficiency that is extraordinarily fragile. Um, you know, look at the fertilizer going through The Strait of Hormuz. the, you know, the, the crops that feed the chickens and the pigs and the farm fish and everything, they've got this new input that's costing, you know, three times as much, et cetera. Um, and it's just in incredible precarity, incredible fragility. And if you can condense that, which plant-based meat and cultivated meat do, um, you can improve your food system's resilience, which is really, you know, pretty much better for everybody.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, well, if we would only do what's good for everybody, the world would be a different place. But, uh, I have about a million different questions on that, but I actually wanna move on 'cause we only have so much time and, and maybe I can get back to some of that. But I wanna talk about the product itself 'cause I think probably our listeners are probably pretty interested in the product itself.

Uh, one, one thing I, I know you talked about with micronutrients, I like to pretend that meat doesn't have any micronutrients, but that's not actually true. Um, and it, it, it, the meat industry on the other hand, likes to pretend that meat is absolutely necessary for human health, and that's obviously not true, but there are nutrients.

It does have nutrients other than calories, and it does... how, how, how, how are we gonna get serious about, um, replacing it, uh, and, and dealing with the fact that people are, are currently relying on meat to provide things that they don't have to rely on meat for, but they are?

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, let me, let me just say one last thing on food security. Um,

Mariann Sullivan: Sure.

Bruce Friedrich: that my, my first choice. Um, to write the forward of the book is, uh, a woman named Kaitlyn Welsh. She was at the, um, Department of State, uh, for about five years under President Obama. Um, she was at the National Security Council for almost all of President Trump's first term. Now she runs the Food and Water Security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, um, which in a pre-Trump era would've been considered center, right. Um, now it's, you know, pretty middle of the road. Um, and she led a report from CSIS, um, that was focused on alternative proteins and food security, um, from the perspective that I was talking about, about the economic benefits, food systems resilience, um, and, uh, food self-sufficiency. Um, she also, since it was written for US policymakers, talked about competition for with China. Um, and she talked about the vulnerability, uh, to agro terrorism. When you have all those extra steps and all those extra stages, it's that much vulnerability, extra vulnerability to agro terrorism. Um, and she very graciously, um, wrote the forward to the book, which I think sort of underlines the seriousness of this as something that governments need to pay attention to. Um, and all of that way of thinking about food security, that's chapter 10 of the book. Um, chapter nine of the book is the Economic Benefits. Chapter eight of the book is the stuff that we were talking about. Um, so I talk about automobiles, I talk about internet commerce and other, I talk about penicillin, other examples, et cetera. Um, in terms of, uh, micronutrients, I mean, cultivated meat is the exact same product. Um, but, um, and one of the things I talk about in the book is, uh, the meat industry right now, um, there are literally a hundred different drugs that the USDA and the FDA, uh, think it is okay to be in meat, um, as long as the levels are sufficiently low. Um, and that includes things like ractopomine and ivermectin and amoxicillin and penicillin, um, and all kinds of other things.

If you're talking about fish, almost all human exposure to mercury, um, this is surprising to people 'cause you hear about, you know, mercury being toxic and you hear about people eating, you know, too much fish and they get brain fog. But what people don't realize is this is pretty much the only way human beings injest mercury, um, is in fish and it is extraordinarily toxic. Um, and I talk about things like birth defects, um, from fish consumption, cognitive decline from fish consumption, you know, and EPA, you know, government statistics, um, talking about these kinds of things.

So, um, cultivated meat is basically all the same micronutrients, all the same macronutrients, but you know, none of the ractopamine and mercurian toxins and, um, other nasty stuff. At a fraction, also a fraction of the bacterial contamination. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't, um, I, I think we need to, in the book, you know, chapter one is about hunger and malnutrition. And I have traditionally thought, and I actually adopted a vegan diet almost 40 years ago now, um, after I read Diet for a Small Planet. Um, and for me it was really a response to hunger and malnutrition. It was a response to the fact, um, that if 80% of agricultural land is either growing crops to feed them to animals, um, or grazing ruminants, that causes the price of agricultural land to go up, it causes the price of crops to go up, um, and it literally leads to hunger and malnutrition. Um, and that argument is about 75%, um, of chapter one. Um, but through writing the book and interviewing people, um, like Sarah Lahey at um, gain, um, and the people at the One Acre Fund and others, um, and the people on the Michael Kremer's Commission at the University of Chicago, um, it did become clear to me that alternative proteins can be a significantly less expensive way of getting high quality protein to people who need it. Um, but that is an area where micronutrients really do matter a lot. Um, like you and I don't need to worry about micronutrients as vegans 'cause we're eating a, a varied diet, um,

Mariann Sullivan: Yes, we like, we do the whole eat the vegetables, eat the whole grains. Yeah. But people who are going to give up meat and just start eating plant-based meat instead, they're not gonna be necessarily focusing on broccoli.

Bruce Friedrich: Most people in developed economies are gonna be okay.

Mariann Sullivan: Yes, I agree. But they might be concerned.

Bruce Friedrich: Well, and then if they're concerned, I mean it really is eat a varied diet. I mean, I guess two things. One is in developed economies, um, eat a varied diet, um, yeah, I mean, I, I guess the guess the main thing is eat a varied diet. And I guess, you know, think about the heart disease and the cancer and the other things that come with, uh, the lack of fiber and the excess saturated fat, uh, cholesterol, et cetera.

Like the macronutrients are the really important thing in developed economies. Um, and the macronutrient benefits of plant-based meat are significant, really just quite significant. I mean, you know, I, I don't think people need to eat, be eating a lot more protein than they are. Uh, but for people who are concerned about protein, all of the plant-based meats, there are 14 of them, uh, that do particularly well, um, in comparison to the animal-based meat they're replacing. All of them have higher protein content, uh, with equal bioavailable ability to what it is they're replacing.

Mariann Sullivan: I talked about this on Rising Anxieties this week, but have you seen this ad from some dairy? They're doing this big ad campaign and it's comparing eight grams of protein in dairy milk to one gram of protein in the most popular non-dairy milk, and it's just a big sign that says those two things. Not mentioning that all of the other non-dairy milks have loads of protein.

They're talking about almond milk. Of course.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, I mean, al almond milk and oat milk are really sort of flavored water. Um, and so I, I do think, um, if people are concerned about protein, um, you know, almond milk and, and oat milk are pretty bad alternatives.

Mariann Sullivan: Try soy.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: Try soy.

Bruce Friedrich: Soy is, soy is a great, uh, alternative, but I don't know, um, we don't need to be concerned about protein, but I don't think that's a, if we're in developed economies, I just don't think that's a, a battle we're going to win.

And sort of, you know, going all the way back to Atkins, people have been arguing about this. Um, I think pointing out that cultivated meat is exact same thing and plant-based meat has even more, uh, protein that's equally bioavailable, bioavailable if it's myprotein or soy protein. Um, and then on micronutrients, yeah, I mean, if, if, uh, everybody should be, you know, making sure that your micronutrient levels are good, um, and if they're not, uh, you could, should, uh, take a supplement, um, or change your eating. Uh, but eating more of a product that has, you know, no fiber, no complex carbohydrates, uh, lots of fat and saturated fat doesn't feel like it's probably the best option.

Mariann Sullivan: So can we talk to a little bit? A little bit, well, we're talking about the product for a while, not just about the policy. Can we talk about the inputs? Um, I have heard of a company that's making food from air. I'm sure you're familiar with them. I think they're Finnish, which is, you know, sounds right, kind of thing the Finnish would do.

Um.

Bruce Friedrich: I think that's Solein, but,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: There're, there're a bunch of them. Yeah. They're doing precision fermentation. precision

so.

Mariann Sullivan: They're, most of the companies are making food from, from other things. From other food. There are inputs, uh, other than air. So, so let, can you talk a little bit about what are the most preferable, what are the most scalable, which that you, it really struck me that, that's hugely important.

Let's stop fooling around with beans nobody he's ever heard of and, and why. And, and the media, of course. What are the media currently consist of? Are they vegan? The big vegan question, even though most vegans don't really wanna eat cultivated meat, um, uh, if they aren't, are they going to be, I mean, some vegans do wanna eat cultivated meat.

I shouldn't, I shouldn't make a, it's a personal choice.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I, uh, other than cultivated meat, which I started eating, uh, just shy of 10 years ago, um, and still eat very infrequently, but, uh, I do eat it whenever it's on offer.

Mariann Sullivan: Right, of course. Which is not often. Yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: I mean the, yeah. Um, Upside Foods, which is the first of the cultivated meat companies, um, founded by a Mayo Clinic trained, um, cardiologist named Uma Valeti.

Mariann Sullivan: Who has been on the podcast. I don't have the episode, but great, great interview.

Bruce Friedrich: So, um, he threw a book party for me, um, little less than a week ago, uh, at Upside Foods. And, uh, we, everybody had their fill of cultivated meat. It was really, I mean, that's a, that's a actually another example of how much progress we've made.

So I had cultivated meat for the first time in October of 2016. Um, and Uma Valeti um, flew across the country from California, uh, to New York City. And, um, we had, he, you know, cooked up some cultivated meat for Susie Welch and me. Um, it was his first time meeting her and also meeting, um, Jack Welch and this great photo of him with, uh, with the, you know, frying pan. And he's, you know, cooking up this cultivated meat.

I swear to God, Susie and I split one chicken nugget, um, you know, less than 10 years ago 'cause it was just so expensive.

So flash forward to 2024 and Ted Countdown, so that's Ted's, um, annual climate conference. Um, 200 people, it's a invite only thing, um, and all 200 of them had cultivated meat entrees from Upside Foods. Um, and I talk about this in the book, and one of the like things that just really blew my mind is they ran out of the mushroom appetizer, uh, and they subbed in cultivated chicken, uh, for the mushroom appetizer. Um, so in eight years, a company that has raised a total of about $600 billion, um, went from, you know, barely able to spare half a nugget, um, to, you know, serving 200 people, um, at a TED conference. And, you know, that was not anomalous in terms of the amount of, of cultivated meat they're making. Another company, one of, I mean the sort of the two fathers of cultivated meat, one of them is Uma Valeti, who's a medical doctor.

The other one is Mark Post. Uh, he's a dual,

Mariann Sullivan: Also just the loveliest man.

Bruce Friedrich: He is the loveliest man. It's true. Um, he's a dual PhD in tissue engineering, um, and a, uh, medical doctor, he was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Um, and his company in just a little over a decade has brought down the price of cultivated meat by a factor of a hundred thousand, uh, by 99.999%. Um, and I think they've raised maybe like $150 million or something like that, that is really, really remarkable progress, um, in a short period of time with not that much investment. So I feel like that's another reason to be, um, optimistic.

Mariann Sullivan: Absolutely. Can we get, can we get back to the media? Um, because that's always been, you know, a, a huge concern of vegans.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: And I know it was always said that we can't possibly afford to keep using animal inputs, but, uh, so where are we on that?

Bruce Friedrich: Uh, yes, we cannot possibly afford, uh, to keep using animal inputs and everybody has stopped. Um, so it's called, uh, xeno free media. Um, and I believe all of the companies are now using xeno free Media. Um, so for the longest time, um, FBS, fetal bovine serum, is what has been used in labs. Um, it's extraordinarily good at causing, um, tissue to grow quickly. Um, so it was sort of

Mariann Sullivan: As it would be.

Bruce Friedrich: Uh, yeah. Um, and it's, uh, but it's also insanely expensive. Um, so figuring out a replacement, like it was never going to be the case that cultivated meat was going to be able to use FBS and ever get to commercialization. Um, and so like multiple papers and multiple analyses basically argued, um, this can never work because the current media is way too expensive. Um, it's like just a remarkable lack of scientific rigor to that observation. Um, there was a, a very scientifically rigorous paper, um, that was done that caused a lot of people to be dubious about the prospects for cultivated meat. Um, a guy named, named Dave Humber did it.

Um, and I think what he said is cultivated meat, it's just not gonna be possible to get to below $6 and 50 cents, um, per, I can't remember what the, um, per whatever, um, liter. Yeah, he said it's not gonna be possible. He doesn't think to, well, he doesn't think he did an analysis. It's not gonna be possible to get to below $6 and 50 cents per liter. Um, it's already below 25 cents per liter with some companies. Um, so, I mean, it's just another example of, um, people unable to look at the way that something is done now and realize that innovation can change the way that it's done, um, and allow prices to come way down. Uh, but I don't think any of the companies are still, uh, using media that has animal ingredients. Um, and the animal ingredients are just way more expensive than the non-animal ingredients. So there's a huge incentive to get away from that. Um, and I believe all of the companies have gotten away from that.

Mariann Sullivan: What about, um, the machinery? You talk about this a lot as well, the cultivators. Where are we? This sounds like work really does need to be done. Where are we and what do we need?

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, I mean this is definitely an area where I hope AI will be able, um, to get us past having to do, uh, analog, uh, you know, trial error, trial trial error, trial error. 'Cause that's gonna be a really expensive way, um, to figure out how to scale up bio reactor design and figure out what's gonna be the best, um, way to produce cultivated meat. I will say the, the early successes, um, with design of the, of the cultivators, the bioreactors, they look like, it looks like a brewery if you go into a, a cultivated meat plant. Um, it basically looks like a, a beer brewery, and there're bioreactors, which is, you know, basically fermenters, um, cultivators. And there are multiple companies now producing in 20,000 liter, um, cultivators, which is a really good sign because the early expectation and analysis was, um, getting from, you know, a thousand to 5,000 to 10,000 to 20,000 to 200,000 to, um, bigger than that, um, was going to take a really long time and be insanely expensive.

One of the things everybody assumed was that the least expensive way to get there was going to be, um, to basically take bioreactors that were used for pharma, um, and retrofit them so by, you know, basically used bioreactors and, uh, retrofit them. And what turned out to be true is that an awful lot that's required for bioreactors for biopharma, um, a lot of what's expensive is the sort of bells and whistles that are absolutely necessary, um, for the sorts of needs that biopharma has, but not at all necessary, um, if what you're growing is tissue, uh, that doesn't, you know, need to stay alive. Um, so the company Vow, in Australia, has slashed costs, um, requisitioning their own bioreactors. Um, and that's also what, uh, Mark Post is doing. It's what Uma Valeti is doing at Upside Foods. Um, so lots of reason to be optimistic, um, but still massive CapEx costs.

And this is one of the reasons that we, you know, we need, uh, governments to help fund, uh, the scale up. The same sorts of things that they do with their biopharma industries, um, that some governments have done with their renewable energy and EV industries. Um, the same thing all governments do with their agriculture industries. Um, those same sorts of programs and incentives need to apply here.

Mariann Sullivan: Given our inability to talk about animal agriculture sanely in any way whatsoever, it really is unbelievable, um, and the power of the animal ag industry, which, you know, you know, is also very great. And the current status of our government, which is at best, let's just say confusing. Uh, so what's gonna happen in the US?

You, you, you, you've expressed concerns that we're missing the boat.

Bruce Friedrich: Um, yeah, I mean, it's a, there are reasons for optimism and there are reasons for pessimism. I think the main thing is there's a, a reason to continue, um, to make sure that everybody in government recognizes from their own vantage point, um, why it's so important, uh, that the United States lean in on this.

Um, I will say that, um, Republicans and Democrats, there are a lot of champions of plant-based and cultivated meat. Donald Trump, in his first term, so up until 2019, uh, the last significant funding for plant-based meat on cultivated meat, uh, before 2019, uh, was in 2005. It was the, I think like maybe $7 million or something like that from the Dutch government, it was the work that Mark Post was doing.

And then the next significant government funding was the Trump administration, the National Science Foundation. Um, $3.55 million for a cultivated meat modeling consortium, um, at UC Davis, focused on, uh, the primary challenges that exist for cultivated meat scaling. Um, it's also true that it was Trump's FDA and Trump's USDA that got together and said, we don't need to promulgate any new regulations, the current regulatory regime is fine. Um, and I will just say as an aside, that would not have happened if the conventional meat industry were adversarial, um, toward cultivated meat. Um, they're not adversarial, uh, toward cultivated meat. Um, they have cultivated meat members. Um, and, uh, and then the Biden administration, there were two approvals of cultivated meat, um, in four years. And I think there were four approvals in the first 90 days of the Trump administration. And it's not 'cause anybody in the Trump administration is like super excited, um, about plant-based or cultivated meat. Uh, but it is because the regulatory regime, um, was a lot more sympathetic, uh, to innovation, um, and is a lot more sympathetic to innovation. Um, and also because they are also not adversarial. Uh, so Republicans tend to be less excited about spending money on science, period. And that's gonna be true here too. Um, but there are a lot of Republican, I mean Republicans generally, just like Democrats are very pro-science. Um, so we do have a lot of allies and the main work that needs to be done, um, is with the executive agencies and those, the scientists at executive agencies tend to be not political appointees, so we can make a lot of progress under any administration. Um, and then we're also looking at things, you know, states that are very, um, innovation and science friendly. Illinois, Massachusetts, California, uh, North Carolina, some other states as well. Um, so there is a room to make a lot of progress. Um, the main thing to do, the main thing is we need to frame it in terms of economic benefits, in terms of food security benefits.

And then in terms of like, you know, we like to say friendly competition, uh, with China. Uh, but the question, do you want China to dominate the global meat supply, um, is something that, you know, causes politicians or, uh, ears to perk up, whether they're Republican or they're Democrat.

Mariann Sullivan: So is there this kind of like mixed, uh, mixed incentives? We were talking before about the US being an exporter that has gotta create incentives for not wanting to change, to rock the boat, uh, so to speak. Uh, not wanting to change the way meat is produced, 'cause we're producing a lot of it. But at the same time, is it mostly the, um, the competition from abroad that, that I don't, it's so hard to imagine them thinking this logically, but that at some point our, our, our product which we're producing more of and which is very valuable at the moment, is just gonna lose its value because other people are gonna be producing the same thing in a different way.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, I mean the US um, like, it, it's certainly the case that enthusiasm for electric vehicles and, and solar and wind energy is not, um, bipartisan, there are some Republican champions. Uh, but everybody agrees, uh, because it's true that the US did the early pioneering work, um, and China has all the production.

So, um, both generations of electric vehicle batteries, the sort of first generation, um, EV one, um, as well as the generation that's used now, that was DOE. That was government funding for open access science. Um, and now China is, I don't know what their percentage is, but, um, probably like 80% of EV battery production, um, happens in China. Um, the solar story is very, very similar. Um, right now the US has, I think, like the top two cultivated seafood companies... believe that's right. Um, certainly multiple of the top cultivated land animal meat companies, there're a couple others in, in Europe and Israel. Um, so it really is, and, and you know, the most, uh, advanced science is also here.

Um, so it's really ours to lose. That was true, um, for EV battery production. That was true for solar and wind. Um, and we lost, uh, development of those technologies. And, you know, you look at something, uh, you look back 25 years in China's total revenue from solar production and EV production combined 25 years ago was zero. Um, now it's I think north of a trillion dollars. If it hasn't hit a trillion dollars, it's pretty close. Um, in 26 years, this is a $2 trillion industry and, you know, it's, uh, it's really, it's really America's to lose. So I think there is, uh, you know, that sort of conversation can be, can really be quite bipartisan.

Mariann Sullivan: No, I, I had no idea that when you started GFI, you actually weren't on board with cultivated meat, like can you tell us a little bit about that, that evolution? And also what about fermented foods? Alright, now I'm asking you three questions at once. So, uh, just tell us about your evolution on cultivated meat and how you came to, to, I don't know whether you think it's the equivalent of the plant-based project or actually the primary project.

Bruce Friedrich: The point I tried to make in the book is, uh, we were so wrong, um, about what we thought the plant-based meat endeavor was going to require. Um, and I continue to think it's probably true that the scientific challenges and the scaling challenges around plant-based meat may be easier. Um, but they're also a lot harder for people to understand. Um, with plant-based meat, people are kind of starting at negative a hundred in their understanding. They think they know what the challenge is and they don't. Um, and even, you know, having conversations with people where one is very, very clear, uh, they still just have preconceived notions and can't really have the conversation and think outside the boxes that they're in. Um, and so that means even though the scientific challenges are probably easier, um, and the scaling challenges are probably easier, you, you're not gonna solve a problem that you're not trying to solve. Um, and in the book, I dive into a lot of ways that the cultivated meat endeavor is much further along, um, than the plant-based meat endeavor, which is also, I think, counterintuitive, um, to a lot of people. Um, and I could talk for the rest of our interview about that topic, so I'll just stop there,

Mariann Sullivan: No to, no, actually, give me a little bit more about what this challenge is with the plant-based meat product. Is it, is it the taste? Because you talk a lot about that they're just not there yet on the taste and I taste them and they taste really good to me. Like really good. So, but I'm probably not the target.

But is it the perceptions about the taste? Is it the taste itself or is it something else completely that is the block that you're worried is gonna take really a lot of effort to, to get rid of?

Bruce Friedrich: I mean, the really big block is getting the scientific focus on it in an open source, you know, open access way. So getting academics who have the relevant skillset to do the work that will allow company other than Impossible to do a really good job of producing the products. Um, because you're, if, if all you've got is essentially one company who's really good at something, um, that's not a sufficiently large market sector to create the kind of competition and innovation and scale up that's going to be necessary.

So on the cultivated meat side side, there are now scientists all of over the world trying to solve the precise challenge that we have laid out. Um, thousands of scientists with government funding solving these precise challenges. Um, it's also true that however many tissue engineers there are on the planet, that is the number of people who have the precise right skillset, uh, to understand what we're trying to do with cultivated meat. Um, there is no other reason other than making plant-based meat to try to figure out how plant proteins can behave like animal proteins, how plant fats can behave like animal fats. Um, how we can replicate the umami flavor, um, of meat. Um, and we just need a lot more scientists, a lot more work.

In the private sector what this means, well, one other observation that I think does stem outta that, um, I think it stems outta the misunderstanding primarily. Um, is we don't have much of a B2B infrastructure on the plant-based meat side, which means every single company needs to be an r and d company, an engineering company, um, and a consumer goods company. All three of those are really hard.

I have a section in the book that says I got 99 problems, but the science ain't one. Um, the science seems very clearly likely to work, um, most if not all, of the companies that have failed, uh, failed for reasons that had nothing to do, uh, with their science and tech team, with their science and engineering team. It had to do with, you know, investors who decided they wanted to go in a different direction or just all the gazillions of reasons that companies fail. It's really hard. Um, and if you're trying to be three different companies in one, that's gonna be really hard. There are now many, many cultivated meat companies that are just focused on media, just focused on infrastructure, just focused on, um, bioreactor design, the range of issues. There are very few, um, that have the sort of, we are gonna service the entire industry mentality on the plant-based meat side. Um, so those are, you know, those are a couple of examples of why, um, plant-based meat, despite probably being an easier challenge to solve, um, you know, again, if you have a, a fraction of the number of people focused on solving it and like all of them, um, or close, are in the private sector. Um, you know, which, and, and you know, I'm a fan of the private sector. I think the private sector is a big part of how, uh, we show governments that this is actually a viable industry that they should support. Uh, but it's also true that every company is solving the exact same challenges in a silo. Uh, whereas once government starts solving the challenges that's for the entire industry, um, and, you know, sort of all, all boats can rise. So, um, yeah.

And then, then your question about GFI. Yeah. When we started, um, I mean, a, we had a complete, um, misunderstanding of what the challenge was on the plant-based side. We basically, basically thought, look at how good plant-based milk is doing. Let's just do that for meat.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: Now that Ethan and Pat, you know, the founders of, uh, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, now that they've shown us the way, um, all we need is a lot more companies doing that. Um, which was just, you know, radically wrong. We didn't understand the degree to which this is a science challenge and not a culinary challenge. And then on the cultivated meat side, like everybody else, um, we thought it was nowhere near ready, uh, for commercialization. Um, and it was really Uma Valeti, who convinced us we should rethink. Well, I mean, he convinced me that we should look at it.

Um, And then we, the, the first, two of the first six people we hired, um, at GFI in, in June of 2016 were scientists. And one of them was, was charged with mapping out the plant-based meat, techno economic readiness, uh, sort of path to price and taste parity.

And then Liz Spect, um, was hired to do that on the cultivated meat side. And we, you know, very quickly, uh, learned that we were thinking about literally everything, uh, completely wrong.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, always, always good to find out, at least early in the game. Uh, I think the part of the, I mean from the public side, part of the problem with cultivated meat and how it always feels so disappointing, and I understand this is just a feature of raising money, uh, is that you have to kind of tell your investors that, you know, we're two years away.

Um, 'cause that's what investors wanna hear. And we kept hearing that it was two years away, and that's been about 20 years now. We've been hearing it was two years away. So I think people have gotten the feeling that it's just not going to happen. But you're making the point that every one of those two years progress was made. It's just that it was a longer, long-term project.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah, I mean, I, I guess two things. I can't speak for what anybody else said. Uh, but I will say I, I don't think it, I don't think it's been more than 10 years that anybody's been saying anything. Uh, 'cause the first company, uh, was founded in 2016, so literally 10 years ago. Uh, so I don't think anybody was, was really making any statements. Um, I don't know what I was saying before 2019. I should go back and look. Uh, but I did look at, um, a TED talk, uh, that I did at the beginning of 2019, another Ted X talk that I did. Um, even a little bit before that, um, and my messaging since at least the beginning of 2019 has been, this is gonna be really, really hard and really, really expensive.

Um, you know, my quote, uh, in an Ezra Klein article from 2021 was, if we rely on the tender mercies of the private sector, um, it's gonna take a really long time and we're not gonna have very many products. So, um, GFIs focus, at least for the last seven years, um, has been, this is a science and engineering challenge.

It's not gonna solve itself. Um, and the private sector is gonna need a lot of help.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And, and certainly it was not GFI, who I recall saying that. It probably wasn't 20 years, it was probably 10. I admit it. All right. Fermented. What, what's the story? I thought fermented foods were like the whole thing. And now, and you don't, you hardly even mention them.

Bruce Friedrich: I mean, I, I think in the introduction, I say, um, whenever, uh, you know, I, I haven't, I have been saying plant-based meat and cultivated meat almost from the beginning, um, and maybe from the beginning. And that's because when I say fermentation, uh, people like get this idea of meat that's been sitting on the counter for 10 days. Um, and, uh, Yeah, I mean, people just, like, even Quorn, Q-U-O-R-N,

I've been on panels with them, um, and they are talking about how they are a plant-based meat company. Um, obviously they're not, uh, they're a, they're a, uh, biomass fermentation company. Um, they're doing mycoprotein. Um, but most people don't know that.

So, I mean, there's, uh, there's not photosynthesis, uh, with fermentation. Uh, they don't make their own food. They actually have to be, you know, you have to feed the myprotein. Um, but, um, from the vantage of the consumer, um, mycoprotein, you know, fungi is, uh, is really, you know, basically the same as plant-based meat.

So, at the beginning of the book, I say, I'm gonna talk about plant-based meat, but, you know, realize that I also mean, um, Myprotein, um, things like Quorn and Better Meat Company and a bunch of other companies. Um, and then the other form of form fermentation that's fairly, very clearly in the sort of alternative meats scope, um, is precision fermentation.

And in fact, the, uh, Solein, which you talked about earlier, uh, making protein from air, uh, that's using precision fermentation. Um, and precision fermentation for all for plant, for plant-based and cultivated meat, um, for plant-based meat, it's really an ingredient, a flavoring agent. So like the Impossible Burger has a synthetic heme, which they, um, they do using precision fermentation. Um, and probably a lot of ingredients in the media that feeds the, um, cultivated meat, some of the growth factors and other things that are really expensive, um, can probably be produced a lot less expensively using precision fermentation. Um, and I, I think I have like three sentences in the book that just say, um, go to gfi.org if you want, uh, more analysis than you can possibly, uh, imagine of the scientific challenges and scientific reality, uh, for those two technologies.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: This book is like, you know, much, much more for people who are not scientists. There's a lot of science in it. And, um, I'm gonna go ahead and do a shameless plug, um, Nature Magazine. Uh, one of the five best science picks they said. Um, and then, uh, Publishers Weekly, one of the test 10 best new releases in science uh, for this the spring, which made me so happy.

Mariann Sullivan: Excellent.

Bruce Friedrich: I wrote a science book, Mariann.

Mariann Sullivan: Uh, I'm not a scientist, but I play one in my book.

Bruce Friedrich: Exactly. Yeah. No, exactly not, uh, not something I expected.

Mariann Sullivan: All right. So we're kind of running low on time and, uh, and I have about a million more questions, but maybe I'll save some of them for bonus. But is there anything we didn't cover that you really wanna emphasize to people other than everybody loved your book?

Bruce Friedrich: That's what I want to emphasize. Um, there's no plan B. Um, like, I mean, that's a thing that I thought might be controversial on this podcast, um, is that since 1961, um, every single year, meat and poultry hits a new global record for all of time. Um, and that's as long as anybody's been measuring, I'm sure it goes back way farther than that. Um, absent a recession, um, or a slowing of population growth, uh, per capita meat consumption goes up every year and population goes up every year. So meat consumption just keeps going up. the only two things, and I, you know, I, this is one where I'm gonna challenge listeners to actually think about this.

Um, the only two things that anybody is doing to try to change that massive upward trajectory is one, convince people to eat less meat. Um, and two, make plant-based meat and cultivated meat. That is literally it. Um, all of the efforts to, you know, convince people to eat beans or, you know, all of those other things, they're great.

We should do those things. I mean, that's, you know, that's why I'm here. That's why you're here, Mariann. That's why all the people who founded the companies have founded the companies. Um, but we have actually been doing that stuff pretty well, which I talk about in chapter 5.

Mariann Sullivan: We're all aware of that.

Bruce Friedrich: Yeah. And, uh, and meat consumption just keeps going up.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: This is literally the only way that that gets solved. Um, in chapter 11 of the book, I do what I think is a pretty deep dive into scientific optimism for the possibility of plant-based and cultivated meat at taste and price parity, but also point out that it's gonna be hard. And then the conclusion, um, is really here are ways that you can help. Um, I don't think there is a better way, um, to address industrial animal farming, um, than figuring out how you can plug in on this. Um, so that's sort of the, the plea, clarion call...

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that, that you thought that would be like the focus, uh, for this audience and, you know, it probably is for a lot of people. I, I tend to, but you know, I think most of, uh, we think of ourselves as an animal rights podcast, not as a vegan podcast. And there's a kind of difference. Like, I really want everybody to eat really delicious, healthy food, but a lot of people who listen to this are, you know, there's a, we have a very smart audience and, you know, if you've been trying something for a while and it's not happening, you try something else.

And, um, I think that's how I see it. I don't really, you know, if people wanna eat... and I mean, obviously this food is, is better for people and than, than eating meat. It's, it's, it's not unhealthy. Uh, it's not what I would make everybody do. If they would just put me in charge, Bruce, if they would only put me in charge, but they're not going to.

So, uh, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure you were right about this audience. Um, but you know, there are probably some people and I, I, I mean, I'm one of them who, uh, I wish it wasn't this way. Uh, 'cause it's so much easier than, than you wouldn't, you could, you know, live out the rest of your life in The Bahamas doing nothing like it would like, things would be so much simpler, but it isn't.

So, uh, yeah. Uh, and you also, I mean, you call on people at the end of the book to, to be part of this and you suggest that the transition is kind of up to the reader. And to some extent you're talking about people who are starting out in their careers. People who have a science bent, certain of, have academic credentials.

And I'm sure there are people listening who fit into that, so that's fine. But what about just, you know, people like me, just an animal activist who's not in that position. How can we speed up this transition?

Bruce Friedrich: Um, I mean, I think there are a variety of ways, and I do, I do try to, um, talk about that too, I think in the, in the sort of everybody else section, um, of the conclusion. Uh, but I think the, the

Mariann Sullivan: Yes, you do. Yeah, I, yes. I didn't mean to say that you had left that out. Yeah.

Bruce Friedrich: The number one thing is getting politically active, especially if you have a Republican, uh, senator or a Republican member of Congress. Uh, the opportunity, um, to, there's an organization called Food Solutions Action, um, which is very bipartisan. Um, I'm on the board, um, of Food Solutions Action, um, and members of Congress care a lot, um, about their constituents who take the time to learn an issue and meet with them. Um, it's valuable for Democrats, um, to know that you are a constituent who cares about this and can speak about it articulately. Um, it's even more valuable for Republicans and we are getting a lot of Republicans to be enthusiastic about this.

Um, focusing on the food security, innovation, consumer choice, beat China, uh, kinds of arguments, uh, but actually having some constituent faces who they know, um, and can cite when they're in conversations. Like that's the favorite thing, uh, for members of Congress is to, to talk about the conversation they had with their constituent about this thing and what they said. Um, it's a really good, um, sort of rhetorical technique. Um, and it, you know, it also is, is true. They actually do care. So, um, I'd say that's probably the, the number one thing.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, I, I mean, that is something that everybody can do and everybody is always saying it really does matter. I guess it's just, you know, politicians, we don't understand them, but we have to accept that this is what they're like and going in person and telling them what you think makes a difference.

Bruce Friedrich: It does.

Mariann Sullivan: Really, really. I, I have so many more questions, but this was really great, Bruce. I learned, I learned a lot from reading the book and I learned even more from listening to you. So thank you so much for joining us.

Bruce Friedrich: Thanks Mariann. I'm, uh, incredibly, uh, delighted to be podcasting and really, really enjoy it. I'm grateful to you.

Mariann Sullivan: And to everybody out there, thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe, like, and comment on your favorite pod catcher or on YouTube and catch our next episode of Rising Anxieties on Tuesday, and we'll see you soon.

​