Paul Shapiro gives you a front-row seat for the wild story of the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat—real meat—without the animals. From the entrepreneurial visionaries to the scientists’ workshops to the big business boardrooms—Shapiro details that quest for clean meat and other animal products and examines the debate raging around it.
Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our species’ 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 underway—discovering new ways to create enough food for the world’s ever-growing, ever-hungry population.
Enter clean meat—real, actual meat grown (or brewed!) from animal cells—as well as other clean foods that ditch animal cells altogether and are simply built from the molecule up. Also called lab-grown meat, cultured meat, or cell-based meat, this race promises promise to bring about another domestication. Whereas our ancestors domesticated wild animals into livestock, today we’re 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 the story of this coming “second domestication” is anything but tame.
“An intriguing argument from an animal rights perspective for developing an economy of cultured, lab-born meat. Shapiro, a vice president at the Humane Society, observes at the outset that the seemingly science-fiction-y thing he calls "clean meat" is a reality. . . Shapiro serves up portraits of a rapidly developing technology.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"A brisk and engaging case, Clean Meat advocates without overselling."
—Wall Street Journal
“[A] carefully researched and lively written volume.”
—Pacific Standard
“Clean meat could be a huge win for animal welfare, human health, and the planet. If you want to learn more about the scientists, entrepreneurs and activists who are leading this revolution, read Paul Shapiro’s compelling and optimistic book.”
—Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet, former CEO of Google
