“Meat” the Meat Industry’s Journalist: Lisa Keefe and Meatingplace
Release Date: 06/15/2022
The Most Successful Plant-Based Meat Entrepreneur Ever? Yves Potvin’s Konscious Foods
Business for Good Podcast
Nearly all startups fail. Often even founders with a successful exit under their belts have stories of entrepreneurial strikeouts prior to or after their home run. But every once in while there’s a founder who seems to have the Midas touch who just keeps winning. No, I’m not talking here about Elon Musk. Rather, I’m talking about Yves Potvin. The classically trained chef pioneered the plant-based meat movement, founding in the 1980s, which was acquired for $35 million by natural foods giant Hain Celestial. One successful exit is rare, but Yves went on to then found , which brought...
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Microbes to the Rescue: Lisa Nunez Safarian and Pivot Bio
Business for Good Podcast
A big part of what keeps you alive—among other things—is nitrogen. The plants you eat need it to grow, so for centuries farmers have been applying it to soil to make their acreage more productive. Prior to the 20th century, nitrogen fertilizer used to come from animal feces, blood, and bones—which is still common in organic agriculture today—but most row crops these days are fertilized with human-made nitrogen, produced by a high-energy reaction known as the Haber–Bosch process. (Or if you take Fritz Haber’s view of things rather than Carl Bosch’s, you might just call it...
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Swapping Leaves for Leather: Biophilica’s Mira Nameth
Business for Good Podcast
One day, while walking through the park and looking at all the leaves on the ground, Mira Nameth had a thought: what could she make with all these leaves? Little did she know that her momentary thought experiment would lead her down an entirely new path in life. The lifelong vegetarian had a keen interest in design and materials, and she wanted to do something good for the world. Already aware of how much environmental and animal welfare harm the leather industry creates, Mira began working to bring a new kind of leather into the world; leather she calls . After getting a grant from the...
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Turning the Tide for Tuna: Impact Food’s Kelly Pan
Business for Good Podcast
Tuna are like the tigers of the ocean: apex predators essential for oceanic health. And just like with tigers, humanity has been waging an unprovoked war on tuna, causing their numbers to plummet in recent decades. They may not be furry, but these finned beasts still need help, and help them is exactly what Impact Food is seeking to do. Founded in 2021 by a few recent UC-Berkely grads interested in doing something good for the world, the company has embarked on a journey to recreate whole muscle seafood without the fish. In fact, their CEO, Kelly Pan, is so interested in doing good in...
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Is the Future of Plastic Fungi? MadeRight Is Working on It
Business for Good Podcast
Nearly none of the plastic we use—even what gets thrown in the recycling bin—actually gets recycled. One reason for that is that plastic manufacturers often include additives in their plastics which enhance the performance of the material, but reduce the recyclability of those plastics. But what if there were a natural additive that could mimic the performance improvements of conventional plastic additives while improving recyclability? That’s what is betting on. The Israeli startup, founded in 2022, is growing mycelium—the root-like structure of fungi—to produce extracts that...
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From Villain to Hero: Rubi Labs’s Quest to Make CO2 Work for the Climate
Business for Good Podcast
What started with a small grant from the National Science Foundation to two twin science-y sisters barely out of college is now a startup employing dozens of people that’s so far raised to revolutionize how we make clothing. Here’s how it works: You already know that plants take in CO2 and convert it into biomass, which we humans often like to turn into clothing. But what if we could bypass the plants, and just capture C02 being emitted from a factory and convert it with enzymes into fabrics that we could then wear? Not only would this magical process take emissions out of the...
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The Most Controversial Plan to Cool the Planet: Make Sunsets
Business for Good Podcast
If you listen to this show, you probably already think that we need to slash human emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change. In many ways, our species has been engaged in a massive, uncontrolled geoengineering project that’s heating up the planet to the point where wildlife extinction, massive floods and fires, and other tragedies are now simply routine. So far, humanity’s geoengineering has largely been limited to heating the earth up. But what about purposeful geoengineering to actually cool the planet down? In other words, while we’re waiting to get our act together on...
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A Packaging Revolution: TIPA is All in on Compostables
Business for Good Podcast
Every piece of plastic you’ve ever used still exists somewhere on the planet, from the ziplock bag of leftovers to the bag of chips to the packaging holding in all the grapes you picked up at the store. We used to ship all of our plastic waste to China, but in 2017 they stopped taking it, so the vast majority of our plastic, including what we put in the recycling bin, at the very best just ends up in a landfill, and at the worst ends up in the ocean. Enter , an Israeli startup promising to revolutionize plastic packaging by making it fully compostable. That means you could take the bag...
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Hummus as a Force for Good: Joey Bergstein and the Sabra Story
Business for Good Podcast
Did you know about between declining smoking rates and increasing hummus consumption? It’s true—a decade ago, as American smoking rates were falling, hummus consumption began ascending, leading numerous tobacco growers to convert their fields to chickpea production instead. Hummus is also a favorite of those seeking to eat plant-based while still getting a satiating snack or meal. In fact, in the Middle East, the birthplace of hummus, it’s not eaten as a dip like it is here in America, but rather hummus itself is the bulk of the meal, enjoyed literally by the bowlful as...
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The OG of Mycelium Fermentation: The Quorn Story
Business for Good Podcast
There are several dozen startups, including , laboring to scale mycelium fermentation to a point where it can start making a dent in demand for animal meat. One company though, has been doing this for decades: . While most alt-meat is made from pea, soy, or wheat, Quorn dominates the portion of the market made from mycelium, controlling more than 99% of the mycoprotein-based alt-meat sector. Partnered with , Quorn is the number one alt-meat brand in the EU, even though it’s still a smaller part of the US market. That may be changing soon, though. In this conversation, we hear from...
info_outlineIf you follow the meat or the alt-meat industry closely, chances are high that you’ve read Lisa Keefe’s work. As the editor-in-chief of both Meatingplace magazine and now Alt-Meat magazine too, Lisa has been both reporting on and editorializing on all things meat for the past 15 years. She’s also the creator of the Meatingplace podcast and is a frequent commentator on everything from trends to controversies and more in the meat space.
While she’s not a meat company executive, as a meat media (meat-ia?) executive, Lisa’s spent much of her career watching what’s happening as far as plant-based and cultivated meat goes, as well as animal welfare changes occurring in the ag industry too. As you’ll hear, she certainly views animal agriculture as a desirable industry worth keeping around, yet she’s very open-mined about animal-free proteins, as evidenced by the existence of her newest creation, Alt-Meat magazine.
In this interview, Lisa discusses her latest trip to Israel where she tried various cultivated meat products, her views on why plant-based meat hasn’t taken as much market share as plant-based milk yet, why the pork industry hasn’t advanced cage-free animal welfare changes like much of the egg industry has, and more.
I always learn from reading Lisa’s work, and I learned even more by chatting with her for this episode, and I’m confident you will too. So, if you’ve ever wondered what meat industry insiders think about the alt-protein and animal welfare worlds, now’s your chance.