Paul Shapiro gives you a âcaptivatingâ (John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market) front-row seat for the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meatâreal meatâwithout the animals.
Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our speciesâ 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 underwayââa 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 loveâ (Kathleen Sebelius, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services).
Enter clean meatâreal, actual meat grown (or brewed!) from animal cellsâas 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 weâre 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 âin this important book that could just save your lifeâ (Michael Greger, MD, author of How Not to Die), the story of this coming second domestication is anything but tame.