{"id":2410,"date":"2018-06-07T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T14:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/?p=2410"},"modified":"2024-08-08T10:27:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T00:27:39","slug":"the-monumental-clean-meat-disruption-emerging-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/the-monumental-clean-meat-disruption-emerging-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"The Monumental Clean Meat Disruption Emerging 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So after our previous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/30\/clean-meat-coming-this-year\/\">piece introducing Clean Meat<\/a>\u00a0I got in contact with\u00a0Paul Shapiro, author of the Washington Post bestseller book <a href=\"http:\/\/cleanmeat.com\/?utm_source=alex-shoolman&amp;utm_medium=referral\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World<\/a>, to get an even more accurate answer to some of the more specific questions I still had on the matter. We also discussed something quite critical that I&#8217;ll get to after the questions.<\/p>\n<p>Paul is one of the worlds leading experts on Clean Meat having actually tasted it as early as 2014. He&#8217;s spoken at numerous TEDx talks and published hundreds of articles on the matter. He&#8217;s eaten an entire <em><strong>array<\/strong> <\/em>of animal-free, cell grown foods ranging from yogurt to fish and more.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2pRjYC00eAY?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_82_2 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\"><p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<\/div><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/the-monumental-clean-meat-disruption-emerging-2020\/#A_Quick_Q_And_A\" >A Quick Q And A<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/the-monumental-clean-meat-disruption-emerging-2020\/#The_Seeds_Of_Disruption\" >The Seeds Of Disruption<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/the-monumental-clean-meat-disruption-emerging-2020\/#Not_Just_Meat_Technology\" >Not Just Meat, Technology<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/the-monumental-clean-meat-disruption-emerging-2020\/#Get_Ready_For_A_Fight\" >Get Ready For A Fight<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"A_Quick_Q_And_A\"><\/span>A Quick Q And A<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>The below answers have been edited lightly for better context.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. Which company(s) do you think will be the first to market with Clean Meat? When is your best guess for a date?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>A. Already Geltor\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/03\/12\/making-mastodon-gummies-geltor-is-recreating-a-truly-paleo-diet\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/03\/12\/making-mastodon-gummies-geltor-is-recreating-a-truly-paleo-diet\/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1528369573365000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGHwDizHi9y33Shns6RBBURQzNH0A\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has begun selling<\/a><span>\u00a0its clean collagen (for cosmetics, not food yet) and it seems like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.modernmeadow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Modern Meadow<\/a> is poised to start selling its <a href=\"http:\/\/zoa.is\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">clean leather Zoa<\/a> very soon too. As for clean meat, <a href=\"https:\/\/justforall.com\/en-us\/stories\/clean-meat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">JUST<\/a> says it will have a sale before the end of 2018, so we&#8217;ll know within six months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. How will the pricing compare to <em>non-<\/em>Clean Meat products? Do you have a relatively accurate idea of the $\/kg price that you can share?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>A. Israel&#8217;s\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/tyson-ventures-announces-investment-in-future-meat-technologies-300641006.html\" target=\"_blank\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/tyson-ventures-announces-investment-in-future-meat-technologies-300641006.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1528369573365000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHKtWcRc4mEDbLWHSNEkQ3jYRt-9A\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Future Meat Technologies<\/a><span>\u00a0intends to have its costs down to only $5-10\/kg within two years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. Are companies focusing on pre-cooked, packaged meats (i.e. chicken nuggets, hot dogs etc) or fresh, uncooked plain meat that you can cook from scratch (eg. raw chicken breast, raw steak)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>A. So far companies are focused on producing ground meat rather than whole cuts of meat. In other words, think more about meatballs, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, and other ground meats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Q. Will we see a whole range of Clean Meats straight away? Or are the companies focusing on a few particular types?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>A. The field of Clean Meat is still so new that the sky&#8217;s the limit in terms of what might be possible. But at first I&#8217;d expect ground meat products that are like those we eat today. In the future though, perhaps there&#8217;ll be all types of clean meats available. After all, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geltor.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Geltor<\/a> has already produced and eaten real mastodon collagen. That&#8217;s the first time any human has eaten mastodon protein in more than 10,000 years!<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Seeds_Of_Disruption\"><\/span>The Seeds Of Disruption<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Hamburger.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2414\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Hamburger.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Hamburger-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Hamburger-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Hamburger-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Hamburger-360x240.jpeg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Continuing the discussion with Paul it became very clear to me that while all this news about Clean Meat is fascinating&#8230; there was something else big lying under the surface. The global meat and seafood market this year was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/502286\/global-meat-and-seafood-market-value\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">worth $844 billion USD<\/a>. What Paul and others are describing is a way to make these products with a fraction of the time and resources currently used.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If clean meat doesn&#8217;t become cost-competitive with conventional meat, it&#8217;s not really worth the effort. This isn&#8217;t about creating a niche product, but rather about solving pressing sustainability problems facing humanity. If it&#8217;s not able to become cost-competitive, it&#8217;s not a real solution. &#8211;\u00a0Paul Shapiro<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Think about it. On one hand you&#8217;re breeding and raising an entire animal, feeding it, caring for it, housing it, using up land for it, administering hormones or antibiotics and other medication a lot of the time, slaughtering it, cleaning the meat from the faeces, fat and other parts of the unwanted animal and more. We&#8217;re talking almost ridiculous levels of used and wasted resources here&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The water footprint of meat from beef cattle at 15,400 litre\/kg on average globally is much larger than the footprints of meat from sheep (10,400 litre\/kg), pigs (6,000 litre\/kg), goats (5,500 litre\/kg) or chickens (4,300 litre\/kg). &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepoultrysite.com\/poultrynews\/36936\/how-much-water-does-it-take-to-produce-meat\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Poultry Site<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With Clean Meat the process is orders of magnitude less resource intensive. According to JUST the main inputs in the process are:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nutrients the cells need in order to grow, including water, sugar, amino acids, lipids, vitamins, and minerals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the process and scale of Clean Meat currently is obviously still in the labs, it&#8217;s pretty obvious to me that when it does get into main production the cost differences will be crushing to their competitors.<\/p>\n<p>Analyst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/tonyseba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tony Saba<\/a> has noted that in his research throughout history, any time there is a 10x improvement or cost reduction in anything it always,\u00a0<em><strong>always\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>results in a disruptive event.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Not_Just_Meat_Technology\"><\/span>Not Just Meat, Technology<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_2366\" style=\"width: 1209px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2366\" src=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Cell-Culture-Flasks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1199\" height=\"705\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2366\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Cell-Culture-Flasks.jpg 1199w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Cell-Culture-Flasks-300x176.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Cell-Culture-Flasks-768x452.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Cell-Culture-Flasks-1024x602.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1199px) 100vw, 1199px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2366\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cell culture flasks with muscle cells growing inside<\/p><\/div>\n<p>With Israel&#8217;s Future Meat Technologies targeting the $5-$10\/kg mark by 2020 I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised to see them get there even producing meat on a small scale. Beyond this price this new technology is just that &#8211; a technology &#8211; it allows it to use one of the main advantages of technology which is the amazing rate of improvement and cost reductions over time.<\/p>\n<p>Scaling this up and relentlessly pushing the technology forward I can see the potential for it to be 10 or even 100 times cheaper than traditional meat products. All it would take is a new growing tweak that increases the growth speed, a new discovery that allows them to grow 2 or 10 times as many batches of meat from the same biopsy source.<\/p>\n<p>While some of the costs might remain the same &#8211; packaging, shipping of the product &#8211; the way in which it is sold could also be changed given how much literally cleaner Clean Meat is. As it&#8217;s lab grown and free from many of the diseases traditional meat has, it has a longer shelf life. Who knows, maybe Clean Meat won&#8217;t be sold per kilo or pound&#8230; maybe it will be sold per\u00a0<em><strong>10 kilos or 10 pounds<\/strong><\/em>. Even then it could still be cheaper than a traditional kilo of meat!<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Get_Ready_For_A_Fight\"><\/span>Get Ready For A Fight<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Animal-Fight.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2415\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Animal-Fight.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Animal-Fight-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Animal-Fight-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Animal-Fight-1024x576.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Disruption is never straightforward though.\u00a0I expect the meat industry to put up a progressively bigger and bigger fight against this. If we look at the regular &#8220;<em>encomberment disruption handling play book<\/em>&#8221; I&#8217;d say it&#8217;ll go something like this:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Make fun of the new thing initially while it&#8217;s new and super expensive<\/li>\n<li>Gradually <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/rural\/2018-05-07\/australian-cattle-lobby-group-considers-calling-for-meat-change\/9728928\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">become more aggressive towards it<\/a> as popularity builds and costs decrease slightly\u00a0<strong>&lt;- CURRENTLY HERE NOW<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Flat out attack it, slander it, claim it&#8217;s unsafe\/unnatural once actual products start to emerge at competitive prices<\/li>\n<li>Lobby heavily for it to be banned or labelled in a disadvantaged way as the products grow even more in popularity and the reality of severe disruption sets in<\/li>\n<li>Fail miserably at stopping the disruption but likely delay it by many years<\/li>\n<li>Go bankrupt \/ be bought out for a pittance<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>It will be interesting to watch it all play out over the next 5-10 years I think!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So after our previous piece introducing Clean Meat\u00a0I got in contact with\u00a0Paul Shapiro, author of the Washington Post bestseller book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, to get an even more accurate answer to some of the more specific questions I still had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,11],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","category-future","tag-clean-meat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Traditional-Meat.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92j6e-CS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}