Paul Shapiro

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About Paul Shapiro

When Paul Shapiro took his first bite of clean meat in 2014, more humans had gone into space than had eaten real meat grown outside an animal. In addition to being among the world’s first clean meat consumers, Shapiro serves as the vice president of policy engagement for theHumane Society of the United States, the world’s largest animal protection organization. The founder of Compassion Over Killing, a TEDx speaker, and an inductee into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame, Shapiro has published dozens of articles about animals in publications ranging from daily newspapers to academic journals. Clean Meat is his first book.

Why You Should Listen

Clean meat, or meat created in a lab without causing harm to animals, has become a popular topic these days. In this conversation, Paul Shapiro dives into the history of clean meat and the players who are making this new technology possible. Paul has spent the bulk of his career working in the animal protection space with the non-profits Compassion Over Killing, which he founded, and the Humane Society of the United States, with most of his time being devoted to passing legislation aimed at lessening suffering to animals in factory farms and other industries. While he sees advocating for more humane treatment of animals an important part in the shift away from factory farms, Paul views clean meat as the leapfrog technology that could make inefficient and cruel farms irrelevant.

In this conversation, Paul discusses his new book Clean Meat and what he has learned about the progress being made by individuals and companies working on making animal-free meat.

Although the technology is relatively new, there has been an incredible amount of innovation and growth in the past few years. Industrial animal agriculture already uses a majority of the world’s land and water resources and is responsible for an inordinate amount of greenhouse gases, yet around one billion people still suffer from hunger worldwide. With this in mind, clean meat has the potential to meet the world’s demand for animal products without pushing its finite resources to their absolute limits. 

To learn more about developing technology and how Paul believes companies working on clean meat can change our food system, listen in!

People/Companies/Resources Mentioned in This Episode