Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Robert, welcome to the business for good podcast. Thanks for having me,

Robert Yaman: Paul. Excited to be

Paul Shapiro: here. I am excited to be talking with you because I learned a lot about you. I thought I knew you since I've known you for many years, and I've certainly admired your work. But in researching this episode, I learned that you have far greater depth than that which I knew, which related to your animal advocacy career, your career as a food tech pioneer.

But you are also a professional singer and you still create music and put it on Spotify, which my wife and I were listening to last night to some new, see some new, smash hits that you have put out, which we will include in the links, for this episode at business for good podcast. com. But why did you leave the professional singing world?

What type of a singer were you traveled all around the world singing? Like I, I imagine that many Robert Yemen fans don't know about this. So why'd you leave that world?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, I've, I've jumped around a lot in my career. I, I appreciate the putting the, my Spotify link in the show notes. I'm sure that will be kind of like the, the, the biggest bump in listenership.

We get, [00:01:00] well, double your listeners. We'll

Paul Shapiro: double your listeners. Okay, but no, seriously, how did you get into singing? I mean, it's not like you were a casual singer. You were a professional singer traveling around being paid to sing. So

Robert Yaman: I was really, into music kind of in high school and college.

Initially, I was a pianist and then I was a composer. And when I got to college, I went to school in New Haven at Yale. I was a big Episcopalian community. And Episcopalians, love music and they really care about the quality of their music at church. So I got a gig as a church singer, despite not being religious myself.

And then I got more and more into the kind of classical choral singing. And eventually I got the opportunity to sing with this really cool group at Yale called the El Scola Cantorum. Which, is a, you know, professional choir that, does studio recordings and tours around, and so, yeah, it was, it was a really fun opportunity.

We sang with some great people, performed in some really cool places. it was never really my career intentions. It was just something I [00:02:00] did, in college, just kind of like a way to make money and as an extracurricular, so to speak.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool. It's funny because a lot of the times people who are involved in like effective altruism or the animal protection movement and so on, when you ask them about their musical origins, they'll mention like punk rock or hardcore music and you're like, Oh yeah, I was in a, in a religious choir doing chorus.

it's awesome. I really like it a lot. Do you still sing or at least do you karaoke?

Robert Yaman: I don't sing at all pretty much, which is kind of sad. for classical singing in particular, you kind of have muscles that you need to really keep in shape. and so it fades if you don't do it for a while, so I don't do it anymore, unfortunately, but I still, I still enjoy music and I, and I make music, electronic music now.

Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: When I was listening to your songs on Spotify, I was surprised that there was no singing. So I, but it is music that you wrote, which is very cool. but do you karaoke? if I go out, to a karaoke bar and you're there, are you going to be singing something?

Robert Yaman: Ironically, I'm not the hugest fan of karaoke, which I don't know, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I [00:03:00] like choral singing because it's a group activity.

I don't so much like being in front of a crowd singing. Okay.

Paul Shapiro: All right. I'll see if I can persuade you sometime. I think it would be fun. I think it would be a lot of fun. There's many people in your social circle who are quite excellent singers who I know and have been out with. So I think you would, you would fit right in.

but okay, you mentioned that, you know, professional singing was not your desired professional career, but you've had a number of chapters in your relatively short life. You seem to be about a third way done with your life. If all goes as planned, probably, but you've done a number of things. You know, you I remember when you started Kieran Meats, you were hoping to be a cultivated meat entrepreneur.

then you went to mission barns where you were, the head of operations trying to grow actual animal fat to put into plant based products. What was it that led you to go down those paths of wanting to grow actual animal products without animals, at the beginning of your career?

Robert Yaman: So I've always really been interested in two things.

The first being technology, you [00:04:00] know, I spent my entire career here in Silicon Valley, and I think there's a real sense of. optimism and excitement about what technology can do to solve some of the big problems in our society. And then my 2nd big interest has been animal welfare. So originally I was interested in the cultivated meat space for that reason.

You know, I thought it could, help animals a lot to get that technology

Paul Shapiro: developed. What was the genesis of your animal welfare interest? Did this predate your time at Yale?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, it's my whole life pretty

Paul Shapiro: much. Really? You came out of the womb and you had a picket sign, you were saying, you know, fur is dead.

What, what, what was the, what was the real genesis for you here?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, let's see. It's, it's, it was a long time ago, so it's hard for me to trace my, my, the origin story. I, I know that I grew up in a very.

Paul Shapiro: Presumably there was some time when you decided to become a vegetarian. I presume you were not raised by vegetarians.

Robert Yaman: Is that right? Yeah, I remember going on a camping trip when I was young. I was like organized by the YMCA is like a sustainability thing. And the only thing I can remember is like having one of those moments you see [00:05:00] in movies where like. Suddenly everything shifts and your perspective shifts and there's like a big montage of like all this stuff and then something flipped.

I'm like, oh, wait, like the animals that I see around me in the forest here are have feelings and experiences and they have internal lives and that matters morally. And so basically, ever since then, I, I, I've cared a lot about animals and animal welfare, but I don't know exactly. Kind of what caused it.

It's kind of just a

Paul Shapiro: shift. Okay. And so how did you first come to learn about the idea of cultivating animal cells? Like you, you were into technology, you were into animals and you thought, oh, let's combine these. But I presume you must have heard or read about it somewhere.

Robert Yaman: Well, Your book was a big influence, actually,

Paul Shapiro: and that was always set up in the hoops.

And that's what you would say. No, just kidding. No, but I'm glad. I'm glad that queen meat was useful for you.

Robert Yaman: Yeah, I, so my old boss at Mission Barnes, Etan Fisher, who's the CEO. he was a few years ahead of me in college. We both studied philosophy. So I, he was also [00:06:00] somewhat of a, somewhat of a career mentor for me.

And I had followed his path since graduating, and he ended up running the cellular agriculture division at just which then turned into good meat. And so he was 1 of the 1st people that really told me about cultivated me and kind of expressed to me that even though there are a few companies, it's there's a lot to do and a lot of learning food and a lot of approaches to try.

And so he really encouraged me to start a company in the space, which I, which I did. And, yeah, just just went from there. So he was a big influence on me

Paul Shapiro: and Kiran meets the idea. If my memory is correct, it was like you were going to be making jerky. Isn't that right? Yeah, we

Robert Yaman: had this idea that a big pinpoint for conventional meat was shelf stability, especially for like non dried products.

so we thought one of the interesting use cases for, for cultivated was kind of like snacks and shelf stable items that, you know, because you're already growing these cells in a sterile environment. And so you potentially could have like [00:07:00] better shelf life and create products that you couldn't make with conventional animals.

So that was the

Paul Shapiro: idea. So that was the idea. Obviously, you're no longer doing it. So it didn't work. So what happened? What was the deficiency that led to Karen meet ceasing to exist?

Robert Yaman: I think that there's a lot that goes into Cultivate to meet other than kind of your product idea, and the private idea, I think, kind of comes a little bit later in any company's life cycle.

So I still think that's a kind of interesting idea, but ultimately the kind of fundamental challenges of setting up. Technical operations, not coming from a technical background myself, raising money, figuring out how to get started. ended up being, just really hard. And, yeah, I had a co founder I was working with who was at base up in Montreal and we ended up splitting up at one point.

And I just decided that I'd rather join a company than then kind of start all over from scratch.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, you know, it's funny having started a company myself, I've thought, Hey, would that have been a better idea because it is a very difficult thing to do. You know, look, there's like [00:08:00] 90 percent mortality rate for startups and the infant mortality is especially high, which is what happened with you all.

co founder breakups are very common, needless to say, in startup land. but, I think now with the cultivated meat industry, Hitting a more difficult time as there is less venture capital, flowing into the space than before. We're already seeing some companies like New Age Meats go under many other companies are doing layoffs.

Do you have any predictions as to what you think is going to happen? You know, there's probably more than 100 of these startups in existence now. some people are predicting there's going to be like a, you know, a near extinction level event. Other people are far more optimistic and think that things are going to come through.

And you'll see these products on grocery store shelves in the next several years. What do you think is

Robert Yaman: going to happen? It's a good question. I don't really know, honestly. I, so the, the company I work for, NAC's Mission Barnes, I think also had a very smart strategy in that we were working on fat, cultivated fat as a food ingredient.

because we believe that the [00:09:00] technical challenges would be really hard to solve in the short term and by creating products that were mostly plant based, but then use the fat as a ingredients to kind of give the products like the true meaty mouthfeel and taste. You can create products that were more much closer to the actual thing, but not at your crazy price points.

So I remain very optimistic about that, that approach. I think that, you know, if anyone's to survive, perhaps it's the companies that are being practical like this. but I don't really know. I'd have, I don't know.

Paul Shapiro: I definitely didn't think that you were a soothsayer or that you knew, but I was just curious as to what you think might happen for what it's worth.

you know, I, I do think that there will be more fatalities in the space, but I also think that there will be companies who do cross that finish line. I wouldn't say finish line, but cross the line into meaningful commercialization. And, I can't predict who they may be. but I do think that there is still a lot of reason for optimism in this space, and I do have a new edition of queen meat coming out in April, beyond Simon Schuster as a paperback.

So it'll be [00:10:00] an updated version. Of this book, Queen Meat, so stay tuned for that, but, I, I share your optimism that I, I think that some of the doomsdayers are, are, will, will be proven wrong, but we'll see. okay, you had spent a large portion of your career seeking to improve animal welfare by creating technology to displace animal use through cultivating animal cells.

Now you are working to advance technologies that won't necessarily displace the use of animals, but will actually make animals lives at least better who are being used and maybe reduce the total number of them as well. In some cases, as we'll get into. But why the shift? You know, a lot of people think, oh, well, you know, it was, the invention of the internal combustion engine that ended the exploitation of horses.

It was kerosene that helped to end the exploitation of whales. It was metal fountain pens that helped to end the exploitation of geese whose quills were used for writing. but you are looking now to do something different with Innovate Animal Ag, the nonprofit that you founded. to try to work, not [00:11:00] to, replace the animal use industry, but to work with them to align incentives and try to make animals lives better.

Why? Why did you make that type of a shift? So,

Robert Yaman: when I left my job at Mission Barnes, I had a really strong personal sense that I wanted to give entrepreneurship another try. You know, you mentioned my previous startup that I had tried and then didn't make it as far as I would have liked. And I always kind of had a sense of like, I want to prove it to myself that I can, I can do this.

And so that was my intention, after leaving my job at Mission Barnes. I think that, you know, as we've been talking about the alternative protein space, where my bulk of my experience was is in a pretty difficult spot. And I felt like there was a lot of companies already and not a lot of white space, not a lot of like ways to create differentiated companies, different technology, also a lot of uncertainty in the general environment with investment with demand.

so I was [00:12:00] looking for ways to apply my experience with life science and biotechnology and other areas. And this, I guess a good transition to talk about, you know, the sexing, it's a technology that I was kind of aware of, for a while, and just to give a bit of an overview, right now, the way that eggs are made is that, you know, we hatch all of these layers to lay our eggs.

And for each layer, there's a male that was also hatched because, you know, chickens

Paul Shapiro: are and just to be clear for those who weren't initiated into the egg industry, a layer is what they call a female chicken who lays eggs. They're not talking about layers as in stratification here, but there are good point layers are egg laying chickens, right?

Okay. And in means inside of the egg. So we're talking about sexing. Why would you even want to do that? What is what are they doing inside of this egg? That would actually be beneficial for chickens.

Robert Yaman: So right now, because there's no economic use for the males of the layer breed, they basically pay a human, a highly trained [00:13:00] human, to determine the sex of the chick once it's born.

And then the males are killed on the first day of life. So this is obviously like a very wasteful, and in my opinion, kind of unethical practice because we're birthing and then immediately killing billions of these chicks every year around the globe. But there's this interesting technology called in ovosexin that allows egg producers to identify which eggs will be male early into their incubation, remove those eggs from the supply, and then only hatch females.

So it's basically a way to avert the. Unnecessary deaths of billions of checks every year.

Paul Shapiro: What happens to those eggs that would have hatched a male chick? They

Robert Yaman: are, it depends, but usually they are just destroyed and processed into an animal protein that goes back into pet food or animal feed or something like

Paul Shapiro: that.

Okay, interesting. So they would be displacing some other type of animal protein that would go [00:14:00] into some food, whether animal feed or human food. Probably not human food,

Robert Yaman: probably animals, either pets or livestock.

Paul Shapiro: Right. Okay. So they would be, I mean, because you're talking about billions of these eggs per year, right?

That's a lot of eggs. And, you know, the demand for animal feed would have remained the same, whether these eggs are hatched or not. So presumably those male eggs. Going into animal feed would displace something else that was going into animal feed some other presumably animal protein that would be going in there

Robert Yaman: potentially, although it's actually a similar supply chain to the way it currently happens, which is that the chicks are at least in the US or are ground up macerated and then processed and also into animal feed.

Ah, okay. But back to animal. So I don't know. How to compare the amount of animal protein that's generated with the two setups, but it's a similar supply chain. So I don't think it makes a huge difference on the kind of downstream part. Okay.

Paul Shapiro: That's interesting. I didn't realize that. I guess I should have realized that they wouldn't just throw these, male chicks into dumpster.

So, oh, okay. So this is a [00:15:00] technology that would allow the hatcheries to determine the sex of the chick long before the egg hatches. So they don't have to hatch billions of male chicks and then grind them up alive. You argue that this is something that's viable and can be implemented today. So what is the proof of that?

You know, I know for at least as far as like I can remember, like maybe 15 years back, people have been talking about Innovo sexing and startups have been making different claims about different pathways they've had to doing it. But as far as I know, it's not used in the U. S. right now. So what's the real viability of this technology?

And why, why would producers want to use

Robert Yaman: it? So going back to kind of my personal relationship to this whole thing, when I was looking for ways new companies to start, I was interested in this technology because similar to you, I was like, I've heard about it in the air for years, not in the U. S. yet. So, like, what's the hold up?

And I assumed it was because the technology wasn't developed. So I thought maybe I could use my background in life science by technology to you. [00:16:00] Help advance this technology, but what happened as I digged in is that I was very surprised about how far along and how good the technology already was, you know, there are a few companies in Europe who have, solutions that are in the market today, sexing chicks in elbow, putting them on into the market and they're scaling up, I think, much faster than I think a lot of people realize.

Animal on profit that around now has resources coming out that should be published by the time this podcast launches that shows that at least 15 percent of the entire European layer flock has already been in over sex and that number is growing every month as new kind of circuits come online.

Paul Shapiro: What's the motivating factor for that?

15 percent of the European egg industry is animal welfare. Is there an economic benefit to this?

Robert Yaman: So it depends. It's actually an interesting case study in how technology rolls out that you may be interested in Paul. But initially there was a ban on male chick culling in [00:17:00] Germany that was done for animal, for animal welfare reasons.

And that, you know, like we said, there was kind of this idea that maybe we could do this for a long time. But I think the ban, which happened within the last few years. Really put an economic incentive, push this technology across the finish line and get it out into the market. So I think what we saw is that the span I went into effect,beginning of last year, I believe.

And so there are a number of technologies that started commercializing this technology within the last 5 years. And so a lot of the times, you know, producers are in Germany are implementing it because they have to. But I think the exciting part about this technology now is you're starting to see companies.

I'm sorry, countries that don't have bands on chick culling starting to implement this technology as well, just because the development has gotten far enough where it's now kind of in their incentive to do so. so it's a long way.

Paul Shapiro: It's amazing what a leader Germany has been in advancing [00:18:00] animal welfare on the farm and elsewhere.

It's just, it's like really incredible. And I've talked with Mahi Klosterhoff and the president of the Albert Schweitzer Foundation in Germany about why this is. And he does have some theories about why. But I will say it's also pretty interesting that in addition to having been a real animal welfare pioneer for farm animals, Germany is also one of the leaders in the alternative protein sector and is one of the only countries on the planet where meat demand is actually declining right now, as opposed to going up.

And, you know, some of the detractors of animal welfare improvements over the years have always argued. Oh, well, if you make lives better for farm animals that people will feel more comfortable eating them. Whereas it shows that in Germany where they're making lives better. It's also at the same time per capita demand for meat is going down, which is a pretty interesting real life rebuttal to that that claim here.

But I do want to ask you, like, you know, so, okay, in Germany, where there is a law that was requiring this, you can see that necessity [00:19:00] would become the mother of invention, but where else is it used? You're saying that other countries are now implementing it, even if they don't legally have to, but where else is it being used?

And why is it not being used more if it is economically advantageous, if that's true? So it's not

Robert Yaman: currently economically advantageous, but the cost increase that it entails, at least right now, is relatively minor compared to the animal welfare benefits that companies can then use to charge a premium for.

It's a very similar story to what we see in alternative proteins. Where while the technology is early and more expensive, the challenge is to find the consumers that will subsidize that technology and allow it to come down in cost over time. So, the reason that companies are implementing it now, when they don't have to, is because they believe that consumers want it, which is true, and will pay a premium for it.

And over time, all technologies fall on cost, especially young ones like this. [00:20:00] So I think it will ultimately. Be a quantity level technology, because ultimately we're talking about automation here. You know, it's a you're replacing highly skilled humans with machines. That's a really

Paul Shapiro: interesting claim because, as you know, like, I was involved very heavily for a long time in, helping the egg industry try to move away from the use of battery cages and toward cage free systems.

And it does seem to me that a cage free claim on the product packaging at least appeals to a segment of customers who are willing to pay more for that. Has there been research done showing that the same is true for eggs, which come from birds who came from hatcheries where they did not grind the chicks alive?

Like I don't even know what the marketing claim would be, but is there evidence that there's a market of consumers who are willing to pay more for that?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, there is. so we've actually done original survey research in this area in the U. S. to demonstrate that were a company to decide to do it in the U.

S. They would have consumers willing to pay that premium. So what we found is that, [00:21:00] first of all, very few people know about chick killing. most people assume that the males are raised for me, which is not true. But once people are educated on, the issue and then this possible solution in innova sexing, the interest is quite widespread.

And pretty much it's a no brainer that we should do this. The median willingness to pay for a dozen eggs that are used to technology is just above 36 cents per dozen, which means that half of egg buyers. Would pay more than that and 36 cents per dozen is the maximum price increase we've seen in Europe from the technology So we claim that there is a pretty clear business case for you know The businesses that have the relationships with those like consumers that are willing to pay There's a pretty clear business case right now to start using some of the technology in the

Paul Shapiro: US Right.

Also, I mean, you would know better than I, but it cannot be that in hatchery innovo sexing costs later down the supply chain, 3 cents per egg, 33 or 36 cents per dozen. There's [00:22:00] no way that it's that much more expensive, right? Because you're doing with something so far up the production chain. So do you know what the cost per egg associated with innovo sexing is, or, or what the cost to an hatchery is or any other economics surrounding it?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, so the the 1 to 3 cents per egg for sorry, egg is a confusing term in this context when you say 1 to 3 cents per egg, we're referring to the egg that you buy

Paul Shapiro: at the store, right? Yeah, you're going to buy a dozen eggs from a from a bird who hatched, let's say, 12 months ago from a hatchery that may or may not have used this technology.

So the actual impact on those dozen eggs has got to be de minimis. it's

Robert Yaman: not, I wouldn't say it's a minimus. This is a pretty cost sensitive area, but it is quite small. So the, the 1 to 3 cents does take into account the additional margin in each state of the supply chain. Right? a lot of the business models of these innova sexing companies is to basically supply the equipment to the hatchery for free and then charge on a per hand or per egg basis.

[00:23:00] And the cost increase of that is, depending on what technology you're using can be like a buck 50 to like 4 per hand. Which then you amortize over the, you know, 3 to 400 eggs that hen lays over the course of her life. so I don't want to do math live on stream here, but yeah, you can kind of figure out the, how much does cost for

Paul Shapiro: that?

well, I mean, I am doing the math right now. So, if it's three, if the bird lays 300 eggs and the bird costs a dollar 50 more, I mean, you're talking about way less than a penny in it way less. So I do stand by my de minimis claim, based on that. but of course, you know, the, the hatchery is not. The one selling the eggs, like they still have to sell chicks to egg producers who may or may not want to spend 1.

50 more per hand, which I don't know what a female check costs, but I'm guessing it's pretty cheap. So it's about a

Robert Yaman: dollar. So it's a big

Paul Shapiro: and so you're more than doubling. You're more than doubling the increase then for it's pretty interesting. But the

Robert Yaman: main cost [00:24:00] of goods for an egg producer is not the starter check.

It's the feed that you get from the day old check to the mature layer. So it's. It's a big percent increase, but not a huge, like, I don't know what the word is, but hopefully it's clear.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, it is clear. So let me then ask you, Robert, like, obviously, you know, you're running this new nonprofit organization.

You have positions that you're advocating for, like that the egg industry adopted Novo sexing to prevent billions of male chicks from being born and killed on the first day of their life. But what does the work actually entail? Right? So obviously, you know, you're doing podcasts like this. I've seen that you've written op eds in poultry industry publications, which is fantastic.

What does the day to day operations of look like for you in advocating for this? Are you meeting with egg producers? Are you meeting with hatcheries? Like what's the actual function of the nonprofit organization?

Robert Yaman: So I assume a lot of your listeners would be familiar with an organization called the Good Food Institute that does work in alternative protein space.

I assume that as well, you know, [00:25:00] myself coming from that space, the GFI is a lot of really impactful work and they're a big inspiration for me, groups like new harvest as well. And so I kind of describe us as the GFI of ag tech. So what that means is that we are think tank. we produce original research about which technologies in agriculture could make.

the biggest improvement in animal welfare while also having benefits to the producer. So it's not so much of a fight to get it implemented. We publish that research and then help, you know, educate, various stakeholders, the media,policy makers and then companies themselves.

Paul Shapiro: So if you think about, let's say, an organization like New Harvest and what we had their CEO, Isha Duttar on the show, we'll include that on the show notes for this episode as well at businessforgoodpodcast.

com. but you know, a lot of what they do is like funding research to look into the various things that are of interest to them. GFI does a lot of lobbying on public policy matters. [00:26:00] You stated that Germany really got religion on this because of a law. Are you looking to do either of those, either funding research or actually lobbying for policies in the public policy sphere that could go a long way?

You know, if you look at the reason that the U. S. egg industry is on the trajectory toward going cage free, a big part of it is the laws that were passed in states like California and Massachusetts and so on. And that's in combination with the corporate policies from McDonald's and Burger King and others demanding that their egg producers go cage free.

Seemed like the corporate policies and the public policies were two sides of the same coin, but what are you doing? Like what's the position that you're taking? Should it be like a McDonald's that's going to demand this of their egg producers? Or are you looking at past trying to pass laws at the local or state level where this could maybe create some real conversation with the industry about the necessity for this?

Robert Yaman: So we don't currently do any policy work or any direct funding of [00:27:00] research. The way I think about our research pipeline is that we first find the technologies we think Are going to be win wins, you know, wins for the producer, wins for the animals. And then we figure out what the bottlenecks behind those technologies adoption is.

And then we try to address those bottlenecks. So in the case of innova sexing, going back to my personal story with it. We felt like the bottleneck was truly the communication and commercialization piece. We thought the biggest issue holding this technology back was simply because companies not in Europe didn't know that it was so widely available.

It was so far along and that if they wanted to tomorrow, they could sign a contract and start doing this. Right? So that's why we're doing kind of a lot of communications, work with innovo sexing in particular. We always try to look at, you know, what is the thing holding this back, which sometimes might be.

Communication sometimes by the policies, sometimes by research, and then we would. I did aim to identify and then solve the bottlenecks.

Paul Shapiro: What is the bottleneck? Is it that egg producers aren't [00:28:00] demanding that the hatcheries do it or that the hatcheries aren't aware that this is an option for them and aren't marketing it to the egg producers?

Like, where in the chain do you need to go? It is

Robert Yaman: kind of a chicken and egg problem, so to speak, where you kind of have to nice. Nice. Good. you have to. It's also a similar challenge with commercialization of any sort of product. You kind of have to get all the stakeholders. On board and find the ones that are excited about it and connect them with each other.

so to give you an example, you know, this technology has been in the air and this idea has been around for a long time. And I think, some of the producers we've talked to are interested in it for their business. Do believe that their consumers care about it and will pay a premium. But, you know, maybe look into it a few years ago.

It wasn't ready then, and they're like, all right, well, it's not ready. And so a lot of the folks we talked to are literally just not aware that 15 percent of the layers in Europe are in a sex, which means that it's reached commercial scales and is quickly scaling up. so, yeah, a lot of the work we do is [00:29:00] working with directly with egg producers.

So the people that are buying equipment. And then, basically, they would ask their suppliers, i. e. the hatcheries, for, you know, 610s, and once the hatcheries start to see that there's demand, then they start to think about, maybe we want to implement this in our operation.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. You know, one, like you're saying, seeing is believing.

Knowing that others are actually doing it offers the realistic possibility that you yourself can do it as well. And I remember when we were launching the Big K Tree campaigns back around 2005, 2006, 2007, one of the things that we were doing back then was really like sponsoring trips for U. S. egg producers to go visit European egg producers to see their operations.

Has that happened? Like, are you aware of the big producers or the big hatcheries actually going and visiting with these folks and maybe hopefully getting inspired to make some of the changes that they say?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, actually, it's not something we can pay for yet. We're pretty new group and are pretty scrappy.

But yeah, 1 of the producers we are [00:30:00] closely with, is, is flying over to Europe to meet some of the, you know, the sex and companies that we introduced them to.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I mean, it would be a, it would be a 4 digit expense, not a 5 digit expense to, to pay for their flights over there. And I'm sure you could find some producers who are eager to go to the Netherlands or wherever, wherever this is.

but I, you know, I, I do think like, there is this sense that seeing is believing and that you could find probably some willing producers. Who might be interested in doing that? we, we've talked to Robert a lot about innova sexing, which obviously would be a big animal welfare benefit if it were implemented, but I know it's not the only technology that you're interested in.

So if you think about the world of technologies, right? Most of the time, people were thinking about technologies that would create the new salmon without, without fish or the new, you know, egg proteins without eggs. like what every with Arturo Elizondo, who was also on the show in the past. But you're really thinking about this in a more broad sense of these technologies [00:31:00] that if animal producers were to implement them would reduce the suffering of the animals they're raising.

So what, in addition to innova sexing, do you think is a good campaign target for innovate animal? We

Robert Yaman: just launched a new page on our website about a technology called on farm hatching, which essentially is just what it sounds like instead of right now. What happens is that you, the chicks. And sorry, this is going to the broiler side, which refers to chickens that are raised for meat and not eggs.

Right now, what happens for broilers Is that they're hatched at a hatchery, their process, which essentially means that they're, you know, handled and we can vaccines. maybe they're sorted by sex, and then they are transported to the farm and the transportation process and handling process can be very difficult and very stressful for checks.

Live transport is something that. you know, it's well known for being like a very difficult animal welfare challenge. There are now companies [00:32:00] again in Europe that are developing technologies that allows hatcheries to instead bring eggs incubated or sorry, fertilized eggs that are about to hatch directly to the farm so that the chicks.

Hatch like in the farm where they're going to grow. So the benefits to this are on the animal welfare side is that they don't have to go through pressing transportation and they also have access to food and water right away, which they don't do a hatchery. You know, sometimes I go up to 4 days without eating or drinking when they're when they're hatched.

The exciting part about this technology in my mind is also that the there's a lot of benefits to the producer, right? So they, because the chicks start to eat right away, they start getting weight faster. So it's a more kind of efficient way to, to raise these chicks. They also need substantially less antibiotics because they're not exposed to all the different pathogens that they would be at the hatchery and then during transport.

so it's one of these technologies that's a win win and also has some interesting overlaps [00:33:00] and synergies. You could say with sexing. Sure.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, it might even do more good for animal welfare in that, you know, the, the chicks who are ground alive as gruesome and grizzly as that is presumably their suffering is over within 1 2nd, right?

Like the grinding process is very rapid for the most part. Whereas these chicks are being, you know, handled by humans, which I'm sure is terrifying. They're either hungry. They're thirsty, as you mentioned, because they don't have food or water. They're being transported in a truck through who knows what weather conditions and then shot into this farm.

So, you know, it's probably like, 24 hours of pretty, unfriendly welcome to the world, compared to like 1 2nd for the male checks, which again is an animal welfare problem, but seems like on farm hatching would actually reduce. Even more suffering, especially because of how many broilers there are compared to egging chickens, which is, you know, an order of magnitude more.

Robert Yaman: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a bit of a philosophical question, but I agree. I, I'm very excited about, this technology from animal welfare perspective. Not only because [00:34:00] comparing the broiler side to the layer side, you know, there are so many more broilers and there are layers, you know, there are I think three, around 300 million layers in the US but there are billions of, of, of broiler chickens that we raise.

So as a, you know, if you're thinking about the impact of a technology, I think. It also affects a lot more animals, which is something

Paul Shapiro: we care about. Yeah, sure. And I agree. It may be a philosophical question, but you have a philosophy degree from Yale, so you must be pretty smart about philosophy. But I don't think it, you know, I don't think it takes a professional ethicist to think that one second of suffering is somehow comparable to 24 hours of suffering.

but yes, I agree with you. And if there is an economic benefit to the producer, if the birds are growing to grow faster or whatever. the case may be then, you know, that seems like maybe it'd be an easier sell than innova sexing, which costs more money. At least now. I don't know. I don't know if you had conversations with the U.

S. Borla producers about this

Robert Yaman: yet. We're pretty early on in this part of our program. And we just started, Publishing in this area [00:35:00] and initially we were interested in it because of the way it interacts with innova sexing. So, you know, we published an article recently in poultry world that was about how on farm hatching would generally be impossible for layers because if you have on farm, you're going to have all the males running around, but you don't want.

But as it becomes more widespread in Europe, suddenly this allows producers to also start thinking about maybe they want to start doing this. So they're the kind of academic literature on this is pretty preliminary, but the results so far have seemed very promising that you also have benefits to antibiotic use to health and also to, you know, egg production, they produce more eggs quicker.

yeah, another one when

Paul Shapiro: I saw your poultry world article, I thought that was pretty cool. you know, for some advocates, they really want to get some of the New York times. But for you, it's probably more effective to get it in poultry world. So I thought that was pretty cool. We'll include a link to your article there in the show notes for this episode.

You've mentioned several times that European countries are more advanced on the adoption of these [00:36:00] technologies. I presume that is because the European animal welfare movement has been pressing them more, as evidenced by passage of laws in Germany and so on. What are you doing, if anything, to work, not just with the animal producers in the United States to try to get them to adopt these technologies, but with the animal advocates to help them make these campaigns more of a priority, you know, right now, the major campaigns relate to living conditions of animals for like cages and create confinement of.

Pigs and egg laying chickens and so on, but I'm not aware of any major campaigns. Maybe I'm too out of the loop to know, but I'm not aware of any major campaigns from the big animal groups on either one of these issues. So, are you working with them as all and are they doing anything? Is the animal we've been doing anything on these?

Robert Yaman: Yeah, so I guess, one thing we try to be pretty careful about is kind of how we, we, you know, we work very closely with the farmers and with with animal agriculture producers. And so we have to be kind of careful about the [00:37:00] relationships we have with the animal advocacy side of things. I think it would make people less excited to work with us if they felt like we were then going to go to animal advocates and maybe give them some negative attention they don't want.

I very much think of us as a, a, the carrot part of the carrot and stick equation. We try to help them see why it might be in their best interest to do these things. But, for example, in the case of Innova Sexing, we have done some work trying to identify, you know, animal groups that, for whom, like, encouraging their members to buy a certain type of egg would be in their, within their mission, because that wouldn't be for a lot of groups, and then work with them to kind of, like, prepare for this So, product launch, which I think will happen potentially next year, maybe the year after and trying to make sure those eggs perform well, because I think that will be critical to ensuring the further roll out of the technology.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Yeah, I have always been the type of person who would prefer to find a way to find peace and and, a way to move forward than just [00:38:00] warmongering, right? Like, for many years, I was involved in campaigns where we really were at odds. With the industries and we were fighting it out of ballot measures and in other venues and courtrooms and so on, which obviously there's a place for that, but we had the opportunity to try to forge some type of legislation together with the egg industry.

Sadly, it didn't become law, but I do think that, like, that was definitely more in my nature to try to want to find some way to work together where you can take people who are really at odds with one another and find a way to do something that they both agree on. Not to compromise on your values, but really to find some way that you can do something that you agree on, and I'm really attracted to the idea of what you're doing, Robert, at Innovate Animal Ag, because I like this idea of people who really care about animals, trying to work with the producers to find some way for the, for, them to do better, to move things forward so that animals won't be treated as miserably as they have been in the past.

so to that end, I wonder, you know, is there a [00:39:00] good messenger for this? Like, you know, you I don't know what your conversations are like with these producers, but I know that for somebody like me who has a somewhat similar background to you, you know, it was always a bit of a challenge for them because they viewed me as very different from them.

and so, you know, it's all we always thought it was very useful to have actual farmers engaged in these battles with us and as spokespeople, because there are many who did agree with us on a lot of these key issues. where are you on that? Are you utilizing any farmers in your efforts in your conversations and your messaging, with the animal ag community?

I would

Robert Yaman: say money and business are very. Universal communication language. So the way we always try to frame things is in terms of how it might affect the company's bottom line, how it might, affects the things that they care about as a business. So, you know, while we take on from hatching as example, when we talk about it, we tend to focus on, say, yes, there's like these animal welfare benefits, but what about 80 percent of [00:40:00] our, our, our airspace?

To talking about, here's why it lowers antibiotic use, here's why it makes your business more efficient. so we found that just keeping it framing in terms of things that our audience cares about is, is the most effective, way to do it. And, you know, we found, I think we found some good success doing that.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I always have said that, the people who run the animal use industries are not sadistic. Generally speaking, they are capitalists, right? They want to make money. No doubt about it. But if they could make more money doing something else, they probably would do so, right? Like, these are people who this is a business to them.

In fact, one of them made a point to me during the Prop 2 ballot initiative in 2008, where he thought that, the reason he thought that we were going to win, he said, you know, to this, this is a business to you. It's your entire moral crusade. So I thought that was pretty funny because he was implying that we would work harder than them, basically.

I would

Robert Yaman: even go a bit farther than that to say that when you're talking about. A commodity market like eggs [00:41:00] or chicken meat, even if a business wanted to do something better and wanted to invest the capital or the resources to, you know, animals better. Oftentimes they just competitive dynamics of an industry like this.

Makes it so it's like, that's like too hard to do. So like, it would be a shame if a company decided to do things better and then went out of business as a result. Right? So I think the beautiful thing about technology is that it allows us to change what's possible. So it's not a matter of like relying on companies to, sacrifice their competitive advantage.

In fact, technology allows them to, like, keep that and increase it while also having animals. So that's why we focus on technology. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Well, I do want to just also then hit you with 1 other technology that I've hoped for a long time unsuccessfully hooked, by the way, that the animal movement in the U.

S. would pay a bit more attention to. Which is technology to end the castration of piglets without any anesthesia, [00:42:00] you know, like, it's, it's interesting. You're talking about sexing because a lot of the dairy industry is now using sexed semen so that there aren't male calves being born anymore. And, you know, there's really no very, very little demand for veal.

So. You know, they don't want male calves, right? They only want female calves who will produce milk. And so they use sexting semen, which helps dramatically reduce the number of male calves who end up being born. Hopefully, the same will be true in the egg industry. But in the pork industry, there's basically been no movement in the United States toward ending on anesthetized castration, right?

These near virtually 100 percent of male piglets. Who are raised for pork in the United States have their testicles cut out of the body. I mean, it's a general mutilation. It was done to dogs or cats. It would be a felony cruelty. If a veterinarian did it to a dog or a cat, they would be disbarred and put in prison.

but the pork industry can do this without, you know, any risk of any crime being alleged. but there are technologies to avert this, not just pain relief, but other things too. have you been following this and is this something that you think might be of [00:43:00] interest to innovate animal? I get some point as well.

We looked into it a little

Robert Yaman: bit. It's not an area where I would claim expertise, but we get a lot of benefit from, working kind of narrowly both the technology focus on now. We're kind of at this intersection between hatcheries and equities and farmers. So I would say it's definitely something we're interested in.

I've looked into, I don't have a good sense of like why it's not more common. I know there's technologies out there, that could do with the media castration or something like that.

Paul Shapiro: I think it's not more common because people aren't aware of it. They're not thinking about it. You know, metal rarely bends without heat.

Like somebody's got to apply some heat to bend the metal here. And in my view, one of the reasons why the cage and create campaigns have been so successful is because it is so intuitive. People know that animals don't want to be confined in a cage where they can barely move their entire lives. So they can't turn around or they can't spread their wings.

some of the other things are a bit harder to understand. They're, they're still comprehensible, but they're a bit harder to understand than just seeing an animal in a cage who looks miserable. but everybody knows that having your [00:44:00] genitals cut off without painkiller, would be agonizing. And so, I have long again, unsuccessfully argued that the animal movement should spend more time on this, but I will again, put it out into the airwaves via this podcast that hopefully somebody will, will take this on, that is, certainly my hope.

So what's next, Robert, you have been running innovate animal ag for less than a year, but you've already brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars of philanthropic philanthropic contributions to the organization. So congratulations on that. Where do you see yourself going? Like, if we come again in 12 months from now, and we're talking at the, 12 month point, like, what do you think the organization will have accomplished?

Yeah, we have so

Robert Yaman: much we we want to do. And I feel like one of the things I realized working on this project. Is that I think there are very few organizations and very few people that are looking at animal welfare challenges under this lens and trying to find solutions that are, to help animals that are also practical enough to, like, get producers excited about not just like, okay [00:45:00] with, but actually actively excited about.

Right? So, yeah, we have a lot of stuff we want to do. more concretely. You know, I think N Lexing, I would, bet that it will be in the US within one to two years. So ensuring the rollout and commercialization of that goes well is gonna be a priority for us. I would love to continue to expand to other technologies.

you know, there's a number of things in the poultry world that we care about, but also we think a lot about the seafood area. Even like pest control is something that we're interested in. We love to do, some more public policy work in the future, potentially focused more on this, like, care angle.

So, like, finding ways to incentivize producers, to get the government to incentivize producers to implant technologies or practices that are bad for animals. So there's a lot of things we would like to do, and,

Paul Shapiro: we have big ambitions. Great. yeah, I think that the, Inflation Reduction Act, or the IRA, is the greatest example ever, maybe, in terms of trying to incentivize industry to act in certain ways, in this case, to adopt more clean energy practices, which has been unbelievable in how it is getting so many [00:46:00] emitters to, start, installing technologies that will make them greener.

and so, You know, it's pretty much all carrot. No stick there. They're basically just paying companies to implement these technologies. So maybe there's something there in one of these states. That's going to be electorate. That's more sympathetic to animal welfare. I don't know. Oh, go on.

Robert Yaman: There's one of the interesting points about the sustainability things.

The I agree. The IRA is a huge example of this when you look at pulling of Americans and you compare their attitudes towards. climate change and sustainability and animal welfare, you actually find that animal welfare is a much less controversial and much more, common sense view, you know, it's often held by 78 percent of people, you know, these basic kind of welfare positions.

So I think it's very interesting that we've seen much more work on incentivizing sustainability initiatives and not so much on animal welfare. So I think there's some low hanging fruit there.

Paul Shapiro: All right, so I, I totally agree with you. Poll after poll shows very [00:47:00] widespread and nonpartisan support for animal protection.

Unfortunately, it's a very low tier issue for those voters normally. So if they have it on a ballot measure where that's the sole thing they're going to vote on, yes or no on this particular ballot measure. You're very likely to see success. In fact, it has 100 percent success rate in every state where farmed animals have been on the ballot from a red state, like Arizona to a blue state like California and Massachusetts and a swing state like Florida.

Although Florida is not much of a swing state, but it was back in 2002 when they passed their gestation create them. and so, you know, red, blue, purple states, they've all passed these. The problem is that most voters are not going to vote for a candidate based on their animal welfare platform. It's just, you know, while they might for the environment, they're not going to for animals.

And so I totally agree with you, like animal welfare, including farmed animal welfare, is a far, far more popular issue than climate change and not partisan, but it's very tough to make it an electoral issue unless it's a single issue on a measure. but hopefully that changes. [00:48:00] I don't know. Do you have thoughts about that?

I do.

Robert Yaman: I, I agree with you ultimately, but I do think that point is often overstated. I think oftentimes this is kind of like a broader discussion about how public opinion interacts with policy and broader society, but I The way I think about it oftentimes is like public opinion kind of defines what is possible from a public perspective, like where people will kind of allow politicians and institutional leaders to go.

And so I think one of the challenges is that like there aren't really animal welfare initiatives or proposals. Outside of things like prop 12 is where people can express this concern and just an animal welfare. So, you know, 1 of my broader ambitions with innovate animal lag is like finding ways to have ideas out there in the world, policy proposals, and just like philosophies that could capture this, this interest.

That people have and then hopefully try to make it a bigger part of our like [00:49:00] public discussion about animals, because I think it's something that if there were people actively pushing it in a way that in a way that really capture this attention, I think it could be really successful.

Paul Shapiro: I agree it could be it just hasn't been so far, but I agree that it could be and I hope that that is what turns out to be the case.

I do think that given the increasing polarization and partisanization of American politics, it's tough for people to vote D or. You know, if they're a D to vote or if they're an arch of a D, no matter what else, but maybe in primaries, it could be something that people would be taking into consideration.

The person's animal protection platform. I don't know. I hope so. I would, I would love to see that. I am 1 of those types of voters myself. And, of course, there won't be dramatically better if there are more people like me. Right. I don't know if I said, okay, just kidding. but I do want to ask you, Robert, like you've done a lot of things in your life, but starting a company, starting a nonprofit, joining as an executive, a startup that's fast growing, presumably you've given a lot of thought to things that you wish exist that don't exist yet.[00:50:00]

So are there any ideas for either for profits or nonprofits that you wish would get started that somebody who is listening right now might think, oh. That's a good idea. Let me take that and run with it.

Robert Yaman: So as a long winded answer to that, I'll, I'll throw out that one of the other things that Innovate Animal Act does is consulting.

And so we'll help, grant makers, investors, policy makers kind of understand new technologies, not just our core technologies, but kind of any, it's not work that we, can always talk about publicly, but over the course of those, that sort of consulting work. We have identified a number of white space ideas, in this space that we're interested in.

So if there are any entrepreneurs out there who are really excited about this general approach, we definitely encourage them to reach out to me. Reach out to us. We have a job posting actually right now for an entrepreneur in residence. Just to give one example, obviously, I is in the air right now.

It's all anybody talks about in Silicon Valley. And there are, of course, lots of applications of I to animal agriculture. [00:51:00] 1 of the ones we're most excited about is applications for 3rd party welfare certifications. So you've already seen a lot of producers in animal agriculture starts to. Put cameras, audio recording devices on the farm.

To look at things like animal health. But I think the exciting part about the third party welfare certification approach is that for the companies that are trying to do things a little better and produce these premium products. The compliance burden, the amount of paperwork they have to do to get these certifications is quite substantial.

So, if you can find a way to use AI, for example,using computer vision to, like, automatically determine whether, certain welfare standards being adhered to, you can potentially have a system that is kind of better for both sides, right? It's a more effective, more transparent way to do certifications, but also kind of lowers its compliance burdens from the producer.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. I would love to Yeah, that's cool. I have always found the third party certifying [00:52:00] programs to, be while important, to be lacking, because, you know, they generally involve at most like 1 person coming once a year to do an inspection. Usually that is announced, and, you know, it's just it's you can only see so much, when, when you go there.

So I've, I think that would be a pretty. a pretty riveting thing to look at if there are some, way to have more cameras and AI associated with on farm animal care. that's really interesting. Really cool idea. Thank you. I will note just one funny thing about inspections. So, now that I run a factory making alternative meat ingredients where we, you know, have inspections from, like, the Department of Health and, but the only inspectors who have ever come to the Better Meat Co.

unannounced, and they've done it more than once, is always the kosher certifiers. Like these rabbis, they, these rabbis love to swing by unannounced and we welcome them. It doesn't matter to us. Like, we're happy to have them there no matter what, but it's really riveting that of all the inspections that we undergo, the only ones that are ever unannounced are from the kosher people.

And, we don't have meat or milk in the factory, so it [00:53:00] doesn't really matter. It's not like we have pigs running around, you know. but it is, it is pretty interesting. so anyway, finally, Robert, let me ask you what resources might you recommend? You know, you've done a lot of cool things. You've obviously are a smart, accomplished guy.

Have there been resources that you have relied on that made things more effective or easier in your life that you think somebody else would benefit from

Robert Yaman: as well? Yeah, I was, I was thinking a lot about this and I wanted to give something really, you know, not very well known and kind of niche and really impactful.

But honestly, the thing I came back to was the kind of classic book of Silicon Valley, which is called the innovators dilemma, by clay christianson. I think it's an interesting, basically describes how what he calls disruptive innovation works. And I think disruption is one of the most overused and, least understood concepts in Silicon Valley.

It's very easy to caricature, but I think the way he presents it in this book makes it clear that, in my opinion, it's actually very nuanced and very beautiful and very powerful theory.[00:54:00] so I'd recommend, you know, folks who are interested in innovation, check out that, you know, it's a classic of of the literature.

And then after that, there's a blog called that I am, a religious reader of, it's an author named Ben Thompson. He mostly analyzes trends in tech. That's in software, but I think that the way he thinks about how businesses change, how innovation happens, it's a lot to inform my thinking in this area.

So. Those are two, and he writes a lot about disruptive innovation, too, in a very, in a very smart way. So those are two that I recommend.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Very cool. You know, it's funny when I, first started the Better Me Co, my friend, Justin Silver, the, the, the thing he said to me was, you've got to read the innovator's dilemma.

And so I did, like I did about six years ago. So it's a very popular book. We'll include it, of course, along with the blog that you mentioned and also include the blogs that you've written, Robert, because those have been very insightful for me, whether you're writing about I. P. in the animal in the animal replacement space or other blogs that you've written.

[00:55:00] They've always been. very authoritative and very useful for me and I've, I've found them to be, quite helpful. So I appreciate that. And I appreciate you. I appreciate what you're doing with invade animal lag, and I very much hope to see innova sexing coming to the United States along with on farm hatching.

And, of course your, your big new passion, which is ending the live castration of unanesthetized pigs and, look forward to seeing the progress that you make. So thanks so much for everything that you've done and continue to do to try to help make the world a place with less suffering, Robert. Thank you, Paul.