I remember when the news broke in 2013. The headlines read something like: “World’s First Ever Lab-Grown Burger Consumed!”
After reading about it I thought to myself “Why would anyone ever want to eat meat grown in a test tube?” Imagining how unnatural, unhealthy, and potentially dangerous these products could be, I chalked it up to a fringe science experiment that seemed more likely to be on the cover of a magazine than on the shelves of a grocery store in my lifetime.
Fast forward to today, and not only have I invested in a company with the world’s first ever government approved cultured meat product that is already on sale in Singapore (that’s right, it’s JUST), but I’ve found myself becoming something of an evangelist for a product category that I once looked on with distrust (and I’ve also learned that cultured meat isn’t grown in test tubes).
What caused such a dramatic plot twist? Rather than this Substack being funded by cultured meat lobbyists (Big Cultured?), it happened because of something in my own personal life. I won’t bore you with all the juicy lab grown details, but anyone who knows me is well aware that I’m really into being healthy.
Over the past 10+ years of this journey I’ve exhaustively researched, experimented, and tinkered with every aspect of my own health and lifestyle routines (I was even vegan for a year - shout-out to Dr. Greger), but after awhile my passion for health started becoming less about me, and more about we (not a riff on WeWork).
By we I mean the planet we live on, because what happens to this beautiful world and its environment affects every one of us. What struck me as odd is that while there is so much airtime dedicated to the environmental damage caused by cars, planes, and energy production (sorry car, plane, and energy lobbyists), the only time I could really recall hearing about the food system’s role in this saga is the occasional TV segment about cow farts ripping holes in the space time continuum that sits in the sky above us.
After founding Level One Fund and searching for opportunities in food tech where my capital could not only yield returns but also unleash positive disruption in the food system, I started to realize how important it is to not only raise awareness about the damage it’s causing to our planet, but to do something about it. While there are so many verticals in food tech that can make great impacts, I’ve come to believe that cultured meat is one of the most impactful of those.
Let’s talk about why. To quote this eloquently worded summation, “71 percent of our land is considered habitable, and half of that land is used for agriculture. Of that 50 percent, 77 percent is used for livestock, either as land for grazing or land to grow animal feed. However, despite taking up such a giant percentage of agricultural land, meat and dairy only make up 17 percent of global caloric supply and 33 percent of global protein supply.” Doesn’t sound very efficient, does it?
That’s a lot of land, but that’s not all. Our livestock also produce nearly 15% of all human-sourced greenhouse gas emissions (plus we’re slaughtering over 70 billion land animals for food each year, and let’s not forget the 1.2 trillion fish). Add this to the fact that by 2050, the world’s population will surpass 9 billion, and the global demand for meat is expected to rise by 70%.
The good news is (ironically) that the Earth simply doesn’t have enough land or water to satisfy that demand, but the bad news is that unless we start changing our food system now, we’re going to keep doing things the way they’ve been done for decades until we push ourselves over the edge. We can’t let that happen.
Cultured meat may very well be one of the most effective weapons we have in this fight. An earlier study from 2011 benchmarked cultured meat against conventional European meat, and approximated that cultured meat would consume between 7-45% less energy, produce 78-96% less greenhouse gas emissions, utilize 99% less land, and require 82-96% less water (these figures fluctuate depending on which types of meat are being cultured).
While plant based alternatives to meat are certainly an important ally in this fight, the scope of this problem is titanic, and we need to reform the right aspects of the conventional meat market (worth $2T annually) from multiple angles.
What has made cultured meat so actionable here and now is the historic decision made by Singapore in November 2020 to approve the sale of cultured meat to humans for the first time. This decision has spurred other governments around the world to accelerate their own timelines and approval processes, and it’s now likely that within the next several years we’ll see more nations approving cultured meat products for sale.
With such favorable winds at the sails of this industry, and venture capital pouring into cultured meat companies at ever increasing rates each year, now is the time to get to work building the companies that will make this vision a reality.
This Substack is dedicated to that mission.