Ep. 189 - Why This Billionaire Investor Is Still Betting on Animal-Free Meat
SHOW NOTES
Five years after his first appearance on Business for Good, billionaire investor Jim Mellon returns to discuss why he remains bullish on alternative proteins despite a difficult period for the industry.
Mellon argues that the real progress in the sector isn’t happening in grocery store aisles, but in industrial-scale fermentation facilities now producing oils and other ingredients at commercial scale with customers already lined up. He believes precision fermentation will likely reach profitability before cultivated meat, and that the biggest winners in the space may be infrastructure companies building the factories that enable production.
Mellon predicts that the transition away from animal agriculture will take decades, not years, but says the shift is inevitable as alternative proteins become cheaper, more reliable, and more secure than conventional agriculture. For him, the opportunity is both financial and moral: a chance to build a major new industry while reducing animal suffering, environmental damage, and global food insecurity.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Books written by Jim Mellon.
Jim’s 2026 interview with the Investment Climate Podcast with Alex Shandrovsky.
Huel’s recent $1B+ acquisition by Danone.
Solar Foods’ 2024 IPO.
Paul has written about the cultivated meat industry’s move away from fetal bovine serum.
Our past episodes with Jim Mellon, BlueNalu, Meatly, and Bruce Friedrich.
GET TO KNOW JIM MELLON
Jim Mellon’s investment philosophy is underpinned by his ability to recognize emerging trends that give rise to new industries or major shifts in markets. This includes the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, as foreseen in the first book Jim co-authored entitled Wake Up!, and subsequently in the new science and technologies detailed in Cracking the Code and Fast Forward.
More recently Jim has established himself as a thought leader in the nascent field of aging research and longevity as well as a key investor in alternative proteins, through his company Agronomics. He is interested in keeping the world healthy and properly and ethically fed and forecasts great investment opportunities in both these areas.
Jim Mellon also runs Master Investor to provide tips and forecasting insights to the investor community. His wealth of knowledge and vast experience allows him to capitalize on sound investments upon which he has built a worldwide business empire. Jim is serially amongst the top 10% in the Sunday Times Rich List and holds a master’s degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford.
TRANSCRIPT
Jim Mellon 0:00
Apart from everything to do with reducing animal cruelty, emissions, you know, pollution, adverse human health effects, we can bring the food and the security of food supply to neighborhoods all around the world. And that's that's your mission. That's my mission, and it's going to happen.
Paul Shapiro 0:17
Welcome to the Business for good podcast where we spotlight people making money by solving some of the world's most pressing problems. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, author of a nationally best selling book on food sustainability, and CEO of a company in the same space. On this show, I speak with founders, investors and thought leaders who prove that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand. The biggest challenges facing humanity are solvable and are often profitable too. My hope is that this podcast informs, inspires, and maybe even helps repel you to build a business that makes the world a better place. I'm glad you're here. Hello Friend and welcome to episode 189, of the business for good podcast. I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode, as there just
Paul Shapiro 0:58
aren't
Paul Shapiro 0:59
that many billionaires in the world whose burning passion in life is to end the factory farming of animals. Well, we've got one here. First up though, here is your wild fact of the episode. Did you know that at any given moment there are more chickens alive on Earth than any bird species in human history? Today, there are roughly 25 to 30 billion chickens alive at any given moment, the passenger pigeon is widely believed to have had a population of around three to 5 billion at its peak in the 1800s before humanity ate them into extinction. Chickens, of course, aren't likely to go the way of the passenger pigeon anytime soon, but perhaps we will be breeding a lot fewer of them into existence if our guest on this episode gets his way. Okay, so five years after his first appearance on the business for good podcast, billionaire investor Jim Mellon returns to discuss why he remains bullish on alternative proteins despite a difficult period for the industry. Jim argues that the real progress in the sector isn't happening at grocery store aisles, but in industrial scale, fermentation facilities now producing oils and other ingredients at commercial scale with customers already lined up. Jim believes that precision fermentation will likely reach profitability before cultivated meat does, and that the biggest winners in the space may be infrastructure companies building the factories that enable production. Jim predicts that the transition away from animal agriculture will take decades, if not years, but says that the shift is inevitable as alternative proteins become cheaper, more reliable and more secure than conventional animal agriculture. For him, the opportunity is both financial and moral, a chance to build a new industry while reducing animal suffering, environmental damage and global food insecurity. So here are my three key takeaways from our conversation. First, this industry has moved from the lab into real factories of products already being made at scale, and in some cases, completely sold out. Second, the driver of adoption is not ethics or sustainability. It is economics. Companies will turn to these new technologies when they can reduce food more cheaply, more reliably and with less volatility. And third, and finally, this is going to take time. Jim believes that we are still in the very early innings, maybe even in the second inning, and that transforming the global food system away from animal agriculture is a multi decade effort. So the question is, after a tough few years in the sector, are we finally at a turning point? I'll let Jim give you his opinion. Jim, welcome back to the business for good podcast. Thank
Jim Mellon 3:21
you very much, Paul. It's always a pleasure to be with you, and I appreciate you inviting me back.
Paul Shapiro 3:25
It is my pleasure to be with you, and I got to ask you straight out. You know, we talked five years ago on this very podcast. It was a very different world in alternative proteins five years ago compared to today. A lot of investors have fled the space since we last spoke, but you are still enthusiastic about it. What do you see that they don't
Jim Mellon 3:44
well, maybe I'm just being obdurate about it, but I you know, plant based foods has not really been my thing. It's been about precision fermentation and cell agriculture, and we've just persisted. There's been some roadblocks along the way that you're more than familiar with, but we're now in a situation where we have the only two factories as far as I'm aware in the world, one of which is operational, one which is about to be operational, that are devoted to what you and I are mission aligned on. We expect to have quite a few more factories, and we have several product approvals, and we're at the point where it's gone beyond the lab to being really physical And in shops with a lot of traction in certain areas, and I'll describe some of that for you if you want Sure. But
Paul Shapiro 4:45
let's talk about those two factories. So one of them, I know you're talking about, is liberation Biosciences in Indiana, Mark Warner's company that you are an investor in, which I think they're still in the midst of building as we speak. But what is the second one?
Jim Mellon 4:58
Yeah, you're right about liberation labs. This. Actually more than the midst it's quite close to completion, and so by the end of the summer, it will be finished, not even the end of the summer, the middle of the summer, and then fully up and running by January of next year. It's taken a bit longer than expected. It didn't manage to get the debt financing that we were expecting. So we've had to raise equity funding, which has been quite difficult, because quite an expensive project. But the other one is here in the UK. It's in Knowsley, which is near Liverpool, home of The Beatles, and it's a site that we bought quite recently for our company clean food group, which was making components for omega three. It's a very big site. It's 11 and a half acres. Only 1/5 of the site is being used at the moment, but I'm not making this up. Our company, clean food group has nearly 20 year patents on processes to build to make valuable oils, so including palm oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, cosmetic oil, and the really incredible patents, and they are already making it in 100,000 liter batches in this factory in Liverpool. And clean food group, I think, will own the entire UK oil market within two years, all of it because there's no supermarket that's not going to agree that a bio identical palm oil, or even a palm oil that has less highly saturated fat in it, which can be engineered out where there's no orangutans hurt and there's no deforestation occurring in Malaysia or in Indonesia. And so their capacity at the moment is fully sold out, completely sold out, and they're going to increase it by five times over the next two years. The UK market is quite big, but obviously the whole prize is the US and everywhere else. It's a very, very exciting development for us, and we expect to take that company public, by the way, by the end of this year, which will be the first of these precision fermentation companies to go public. It's a really exciting thing, and we own 40% of it.
Paul Shapiro 7:11
Well, that's definitely exciting. I can't wait to see this exit. So you raise an
Jim Mellon 7:15
not an exit, but a liquidity event, because I don't want to sell it. It's too good a company.
Paul Shapiro 7:21
Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean you would be exiting, but you'll have you, I presume some of your, some of those, 60% of the shareholders will exit if they get some liquidity event. Well,
Jim Mellon 7:29
they have to, or they'll just have to raise money on the IPO. But it's just really good to feel that after all these years of effort, that something really tangible. I mean, as you well know, palm oil is one of the most destructive products on the planet. Olive oil is subject to huge variations in price and availability because of the drought. And I don't know if your viewers know, but Spain is by far the biggest producer of olive oil in the world. Italy is number two, and Greece is number three, and they are culturally embedded with olive oil. So a very secure supply of this stuff would be fantastic. And then, I don't know what the situation with Nutella is in the United States, but it's a big, big product here and in Europe, made by Ferrero Rocher. It's one of the biggest confectionery products in the world, and we can make their cocoa butter without them having to be subjected to the ups and downs of the cocoa price.
Paul Shapiro 8:32
Yeah, it's very exciting. I hope this comes to fruition. And you raise an interesting point about these liquidity events, because when you and I were last talking on this podcast. You know, this was five years ago, so there had been, you know, in 2015 corn Q, U, O, R, N got acquired by Monday Nicolas and for over a billion dollars, inflation adjusted to today, in 2017 you saw Field Roast and light life get acquired by Maple weave foods each for about $100 million you saw beyond IPO in 2019 and then Oatly IPO in 2021 and of course, those two latter companies that went public haven't done so on the public markets, to put it mildly, but in the last five years, there really haven't been many liquidity events for investors In the precision fermentation space, the cultivated meat space, or the plant based meat space. Why? What do you think happened in the last five years that rendered the possibility of acquisitions or IPOs in this alternative protein space so so fleeting? That's
Jim Mellon 9:35
a great question. I think there's a variety of reasons. One is that venture capital has been, unless you've been in AI, has been a very difficult area for raising money. The second is that there's a conflation in investors minds between plant based foods and the novel proteins that suffer that we're developing. And, you know, and because beyond an impossible and I. Companies in that area have not done particularly well. There's a view that the whole sector has not done very well, so it's been just hard to raise money. That have been said our companies, and we have 21 companies last year, raised over 50% of all the money in novel protein raises more than 300 million US dollars, and all of the ones, at least the ones that we have left because one of our companies has gone belly up, Dutch company, meatable. Are, you know, frankly speaking, looking good. I mean, they're all every company. My background is in biotech, as you know, Paul is always trying to raise money. But the situation is much, much improved since about a year ago. Basically it looks it looks pretty exciting to me, and I have put quite we have two pots of money. We have one which is called agronomics listed in London, and we have another one which is a private fund which is largely aimed at Middle Eastern investors. But I put quite a lot of money myself into that fund recently, because I do actually believe in the whole project, and it's not just a sort of passion belief, I think that this will actually end up making money for investors in quite a big way.
Paul Shapiro 11:27
Yeah, so you and I share that view, right? You and I are actually quite aligned, because both of us are passionate about protecting animals from abuse, and we both are dog lovers, but we also think this is a good business opportunity to be betting on animal free protein sources. So when you wrote your book, which is called Moose law, that's m, O, O, apostrophe, S, of course, a play on Moore's law, you were arguing that the cost to make cultivated animal products was going to come down in a way similar to what Moore's law had projected for computing right, that every couple years you would see a halving of the price, and Moore's law has been very constant for half a century. What about moose law in the last five years? Maybe, maybe you'd say it's too soon to tell. But has your theory been validated? Has the price come down sufficiently, in your view, to have a Moore's Law type effect in cultivated meat?
Jim Mellon 12:22
Yeah, that's a very good question. I mean, I think it varies from company to company. I mean, Moore's Law obviously applied to Intel. But if you look at our company, meatley, which is the first sell cultivated product, has the first cell to cultivated product approved in Europe, which is a dog food, believe it or not, and it's a clever strategy, and it's on sale now, and every packet that's made is sold when we started that company, which we did, we this is one of our whitespace companies, where we assembled the management team and Put the money in. The cost of the media was, as your viewers will appreciate, is the feedstock and the most expensive element for the production of this meat was about 700 British pounds, or, let's say, nearly 1000 US dollars per per liter. And today it's two British pence per liter, which is about less than three cents per liter, and by the end of this year, it will be less than one pence per liter. So at a modest scale, the price of the chicken that they're producing, which is for dog food, but ultimately could be for humans, will be less than the price of the cheapest chicken you can buy in the supermarket today. That's moose law at work, much faster than Moore's law. Well,
Paul Shapiro 13:50
that'll be pretty that'll be pretty astonishing. And I think I miss book. I think Moore's law is actually having every 18 months, not every two years, but either way, I understand the
Jim Mellon 13:59
well, it's a halving and a doubling in efficiency, yes,
Paul Shapiro 14:02
and a doubling inefficiency. Thank you. But I think the time, I think the time for 18 months,
Jim Mellon 14:06
you're correct, and actually it's stalled in the last two or three years.
Paul Shapiro 14:10
Oh, wow. Okay, well, that's quite interesting. I can't wait to look into that I'm not as familiar with.
Jim Mellon 14:16
But isn't that incredible that they've got because you remember that when we were talking five years ago, the inputs, things like fetal bovine serum and growth factors and so forth, were unbelievably expensive, and the industry was thinking about producing this stuff as if it was A pharmaceutical. And so the cost was very, very high. But now, if you run a company frugally, then you're going to end up with low costs. So our palm oil facility, for instance, liberation labs, has cost us 125 will have cost 100 And $25 million by the time it's finished, we bought the factory in Liverpool, which is considerably bigger than the liberation labs factory, for 1 million pounds, about 1.3 million US dollars. And that makes a huge difference, because the cost of capital carry in the the total tally of costs of production is only 4% relative to 25% for a normal Greenfield factory construction. And so they can produce their product at a price which is very attractive to the end users of the product. Now, by me said, liberation Labs is completely sold out in terms of its future production. And of course, the factory that we have in Liverpool is completely sold out as well to Mondelez, the big American producer, which owns a company here in the UK called Cadbury's, which makes chocolates, and so it's, you know, if you can build the factory, the clients are coming and they're using it, and they're not using it because the consumers are all very excited about fact that there's no animals involved that will come, I think, for you and me, but that's what we want. But they're using it because they can produce it at a lower price, with a less price variability and with greater quality consistency.
Paul Shapiro 16:28
All right, so Jim, you just referenced Field of Dreams, maybe inadvertently said, If you build it, they will come. In this case, you're saying you've built it, and they are coming now in Moose law, you're you compared the present, or at least five years ago, present circumstances for investors in alternative protein as the early days of the Internet, right? Like these were the early days of the internet. So if this were a baseball game, where are we right now? We in the first inning, the third inning, like, and I don't mean for plant based or precision, I just mean in the endeavor to displace the number of animals who are used for food. Where are we? Do you think in that baseball game today?
Jim Mellon 17:04
Well, very, very early stage,
Paul Shapiro 17:05
first inning,
Jim Mellon 17:06
yeah, maybe second, because the technology is there. Now. There's proof of concept that things can be made in precision fermentation. There is no problem with scale up. There is still a question as to whether it could be scaled up enormously in cell cultivated meat and fish. We'll see it's the problem is that every year that goes by, Paul there's an increasing demand for animal protein, and it's causing more and more environmental damage, more and more animal suffering, more and more. You know, emissions into the atmosphere and so forth. So all that we can do at the moment is to chip away at the edges of that excess of that increasing demand. I would say this is going to be a multi generational thing we have, if we can stay the course. We've got at least 3040 not that I'll be around in 3040, years, but we've got 30 or 40 years of growth in this industry before it even touches the edges. I envisage with the success, hopefully, of our two plants, that within 10 years, will have possibly one to 200 plants around the world of increasing size, and the area that's most prospective for us is the Middle East. This war in the Middle East has shown the vulnerability of the supply chain, especially vis a vis food, and they import in the GCC countries 95% of their food we have a very active presence in the Middle East, and we're the only game in town that everyone who was in the game there has either gone bust or has retreated. And I know that in the next two or three months, we already have one Middle Eastern partner in Saudi Arabia. I know that the next two or three months we'll be announcing large plants in the GCC because they can make their own food in situ. They don't have a resident farming industry that can lobby against it. And they need it, and they've got the money.
Paul Shapiro 19:14
Yeah, they definitely do need it. And I'm hopeful that you're doing this. I do want to just double click on one point that you made, Jim, you said you may not be around in 30 or 40 years. The last time we talked, you said that you thought that people might be living to 150 I don't know if that applies to you personally, but I know that longevity is a very big passion of yours. I know with your company juvenescence, you're investing heavily in longevity. Your father lived into his mid 90s. Are you going to be around for longer than that?
Jim Mellon 19:40
Well, I hope so, but you just never know. All right, so I'm not saying, let's put it this way, then 30 or 40 years time, I hope I'm not still doing podcast. I love doing podcasts, but I hope I you know, I don't have to go out on the road and try and raise money for things. I hope it's all got a life of its own. But. But the you know, there is no doubt that people are living longer. The problem is that people are living in worse health in their later years. And that's that, not that we need to crack is the the problem for all of us is that you don't want to leave live 20 years in in bad health, and the worst country in that respect is, of course, the United States. I mean, you know, it is apt. You've got the best health care for for richer people in the world. You've got the best technology. You are one of the richest societies in the world per capita, but you live four years less than the average European. Why is that? Part of it, of course, is due to the shit food system.
Paul Shapiro 20:43
Yeah, no doubt that diet is a major contributor. I will tell you. You know, it is this very wealthy country, and I live in California, which is a Balti state. I Two months ago, as of this recording, I tore the meniscus in my knee, and I'm still waiting for a surgery to fix this. And there's been a nurses strike that prevented them from doing anything for a while, and now they're trying to clear out this backlog. So amusingly, even though I live in this very wealthy part of a wealthy country, you know, a basic thing like getting your knee repaired is still, you know, two months of me hobbling around here so
Jim Mellon 21:18
over gets fixed soon. I mean, yeah, because it's really awful, yeah. But I mean, I think four years less of life expectancy is a very big deal. And I mean, I know we're diverting away from the food thing, but Paul, it's actually food is very important to longevity. And you know, the longest lived people in the world are either in the southern Mediterranean or in parts of Asia, because they eat better diets, I think is fundamentally the main point.
Paul Shapiro 21:47
Yeah, listen, I am so with you on this. There's so much to try to improve longevity by one, two or 5% but we know that very basic things like eating a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, getting enough sleep and so on are really critical. I do want to come back to this longevity point, but I have so much that I want to ask you, Jim about alternative protein that I just want to steer back to this. So when you wrote the book, it was a very different time. As I said earlier, you have told others, including my friend Alex on the climate investing podcast, that you're thinking about doing an updated version of moose law that that would be, you know, updated. So the question is, what are you going to change? You predicted a lot of different companies that would succeed and would fail during in the first edition of the book, you made other predictions about when we might reach griddle parity, as you called it, which is basically getting down to cost parity with animal based proteins. But what do you think will change like you're going to if you have an opportunity to rewrite this book? What's going to be different in the new edition?
Jim Mellon 22:48
Well, my the first book was an aggregation of interviews that I did during the pandemic with the leaders of a whole variety of companies. This one will be more triaged these are going to be the winners. This is how you can invest in this area. And the technology is, more or less, I think, actually, now established. And how will these companies succeed? Will there be licensing companies? Will they be self producing companies? Will they be ingredient producers? And how are we going to get to the point raising all this money this, you know, we can raise money to get the companies to produce small batches, but the infrastructure play here is enormous. How is this going to be financed, and so there'll be more about the practicalities of taking it beyond the level of dreams to the levels of establishing a very major industry. Now I will tell you that almost every major food company in the world is interested in some aspects of what you and I are doing, and they understand that this is the future. And you know, here in the UK we have some dominant supermarkets, notably Marks and Spencers, Tesco, Sainsbury's, all of them want to be involved in this, all of them. And so when I talked about the palm oil and the olive oil and all that sort of stuff, there isn't one of them that won't take the product in preference, in preference to the regular products. Yeah,
Paul Shapiro 24:31
when you were writing the first edition of the book, Jim, if you could have fast forward half a decade to today and see just how little cultivated meat is on the market, or even how little precision fermentation ingredients are on the market today? Would that have surprised you? Like, would you have thought, hey, half a decade from now, there will be more than what turned out to be, or has it gone at the pace at which you would have predicted?
Jim Mellon 24:52
I think it's more or less the pace that I would have predicted, because, as in, biotech, everything takes longer than you think. But then it suddenly accelerates, and I think we're at that point of acceleration at the
Paul Shapiro 25:04
moment. You mentioned, Jim, that you don't want to have to be raising money. I think for a lot of people who would hear you say that, they would think, you know, hey, this guy is reportedly a billionaire. It says, this is your passion, right? You want to help liberate animals from the food system. You don't have any descendants. Why not spend more yourself on this? Right? If somebody is going to say, Why are you out there in the markets raising money, why don't you spend some of your own on it? Now, obviously you're putting in hundreds of millions. I've realized that. But to the person who would say, Why do you need to raise money? Why do you have to go into the markets?
Jim Mellon 25:32
Well, I mean that, yes, I do have a lot of money. But there are three aspects to your question. One is, I have put a lot of money into this area. The second is, I this area is not going to reap rewards immediately, but we need to be able to recycle our money, so I have to have a pool of money to invest in other stuff. So, you know, we have a large investment in German property. We have a big investment in quantum computing as an example. We have investments in a whole load of stuff, and that's what creates the liquidity to fund what we're doing. And then the third thing is, you know, you and I are passionate about animals, and we give money to a lot of stuff, but my other half and myself want to give a lot of money for the protection of animals. And so there are three pots of money that are all or potential money that are all demanding whatever I've got, basically, and frankly speaking, this, you know, I told you that liberation, I was $125 million the first plant in the Middle East, or probably be $300 million you can't do it, you know, even if you're the richest man in the world. I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg decided tomorrow morning that this is what he wanted to do, I mean, he could do a lot more than me, but he and even Bill Gates, there's not enough in their pockets to fund what is required. We need governments, we need other investors, we need the big institutions to come forward and support this. And by the way, these are job creating, high value, high margin, fantastic additions to any industrial landscape.
Paul Shapiro 27:16
It's obvious that you're bullish on using technology to replace animals in the food system. Jim, I know that you're also a philanthropist. In the book in Moose law, you said that you know raising awareness, just telling people how horribly animals are treated, or how bad the environment is getting, is not going to be sufficient that we have to produce products that taste as good and are less expensive. So from a philanthropic perspective, if you're giving to advanced animal welfare, what are the things that philanthropically you are excited about, right? So if technology is what you're investing in in order to help advance this cause of your life, what philanthropically do you think can also help?
Jim Mellon 27:50
Well, that's a great question. I mean, in a way, you know, just by supporting these companies without immediate prospect of a return, when I could invest in a bond for, you know, whatever percentage is a philanthropic act, because, you know, you are deferring return, even though I think the return will be fantastic for a period and but Dafina and I are Very we give a lot of money to dog dog rescues, dog support, dog health research, and actually, that has a human impact as well, because whatever happens in dogs, in many ways, can be translated into human health as well. And so we are dog nuts. We talked about this before the show started. We've got 10, and we have another shelter with another 30 in them. And honestly, it, you know, if we could have 500 I would, I would, yeah.
Paul Shapiro 28:58
And
Jim Mellon 28:59
if we were in a lifeboat, by the way, Paul, and it was a question of who's who gets rescued. It's the dogs.
Paul Shapiro 29:04
I hope with you, but I think you're very similar to my to my own mom, who would have an unlimited number of dogs were she able to do that, and to be able to care for them all. But as you know, I'm passionate about dogs. My wife and I have fostered a number of dogs from our local animal shelter, one of whom became a permanent dog of ours six years ago. And who is, if you were to look at a pie chart of the happiness sources in our life, he is like by far the biggest slice of that pie chart, for sure. And I don't want to, I would not answer the question if somebody asked me if I would save his life or somebody else's? I don't, I don't know.
Jim Mellon 29:43
That's a bit flippant, to be quite honest. It's a bit funny. Of course. You don't know, none of us want to be on the Titanic having to make that choice, but I'm just saying that. You know, they are so important to us. There, there are just the wonderful creatures that are totally dependent on us and give unconditional love. I. And frankly speaking, don't seem to have the same psychological problems as most humans do. Basically, yeah,
Paul Shapiro 30:07
no, I prefer I prefer dogs. That's the honest truth, okay, in the book. And when we talked five years ago, you were most bullish on cultivated and on precision. Has anything changed? If you look today in 2026 What are you most excited about? Are you more have you gotten any religion on biomass, fermentation? Is there any plant based technology that you think is exciting to you, or is it still the same, just precision and cultivated?
Jim Mellon 30:33
Well, that's a very good question. And actually, I think there's great merit in looking into both of those. And I need to do that for the new book, and that will be incorporated in the new book, because I think that we're at the stage. And I mean, I just anecdotally walking around Tesco, which is has 28% of the UK grocery market. They have a very large section now devoted to plant based foods. It's quite remarkable. And you talked about corn. Corn is a I've got corn in the fridge here, actually, and it's, you know, great product. And there's plenty of other plant based products that were getting better and better and better. So when beyond came out with their thing, it's just not the same. All right, it's not the same. But now the products are getting much, much closer to being like acceptable to consumers in terms of taste, texture and price, and I think that that is an area that I need to explore for the book. But the first thing I'm doing is writing my book about water, which I'm sort of halfway through at the moment. I need to get that out first, and in the last five years, by the way, also, I don't know if you know this, Paul, but I wrote a book. I've written two books about one of our dogs called Juno, and the first one was called Juno's ark, and it's about clean meat seen through the eyes of dogs.
Paul Shapiro 31:54
Ah, you're marrying all of my interests here, Jim, I need to read this. Sorry. I'll
Jim Mellon 31:59
send it to you, and I'll send you also her book, Juno goes to London, which is about the environment. And then there's a new one, which will be out before the end of this year, which is almost finished, called Juno goes to school. And so you'll get that one as well when it comes out. So leave it to me. I'll make sure you get it.
Paul Shapiro 32:18
I'm so honored. I can't wait. Little interest me more than the marriage of clean meat and dogs.
Jim Mellon 32:23
By the way, the dog, the dogs eat this clean meat, of course, because they're eating the meat Lee product. Yeah,
Paul Shapiro 32:30
yeah, my dog has eaten clean meat a number of times now, and I was actually pretty impressed. He's a very finicky guy. He doesn't like most food, most foods. He doesn't. He won't eat any of the vegan dog foods, but this week, so there's a German startup called micro harvest, which is a biomass microbial protein fermentation company, and they made cat treats that are 20% of their microbial proteins, but the rest of the treat is vegan. And I was so shocked. I was so shocked my dog ate it. I couldn't believe it. You know, these are cat treats, not dog treats, but I wanted to see if he would like it. And so he and he did so good for micro harvest and and good for the cultivated meat companies. I need to get some meat Lee, though he hasn't tried that yet, and I'm hoping I know it's a for sale in the UK, but I got to get some for him over here in the US.
Jim Mellon 33:18
Yeah, I think the they're going to be on sale in Canada quite soon, apparently. So there's a company in the UK called pets at home. We have a very different pet market in the UK to what you have in the US, that it's two thirds of households have got a pet and there's a the vets are owned by private equity basic. They're very expensive vet bills here and pets at home has 25% of the whole pet market, and they're the ones who both invested in neatly and also distribute the product.
Paul Shapiro 33:56
It's also pretty shocking in the United States, where it is literally harder to introduce a novel food for the pet market than for the human market. You know, in the human market, the company merely declares that the product is generally recognized as safe without any government review, and they can start selling, whereas in the pet market, you know, you really need to get approval from this body called AFCO in order to start putting your ingredient in a pet food. And it's a it's a much higher hurdle. So I know this isn't true in Europe, but it's really surprising in the US how stringent the pet food market is on the novel food issue. Yeah, I wish this weren't so, because as somebody who works in my professional life is growing mycelium for the human food market. I would love to be able to get it into some pet intestines as well. Okay.
Jim Mellon 34:46
Well, let me, let me, when I do the revision of the book, I need to talk to you about your mycelium business so I can incorporate that. Let's do that. Yeah,
Paul Shapiro 34:56
yeah, that sounds great. I will say in your first. Book, you had this rating of the companies that were, you know, how many stakes did you give them? With five being the best, right? Five out of five. And I'm very proud to say that in the book, you rated my company the better, Miko, with four out of five stakes, which is pretty good. I'll take it.
Paul Shapiro 35:12
I'll
Jim Mellon 35:12
give you five next time, if you do a good job.
Paul Shapiro 35:16
What an honor. Well, amazingly, only many other companies in the space were still alive five years later.
Jim Mellon 35:20
I know, I know it's a you've done extremely well. It's very especially to be based in California, which is a very expensive place to operate,
Paul Shapiro 35:29
true, but we're not in the bay. We're out in Sacramento. It's,
Jim Mellon 35:32
yeah, yeah.
Paul Shapiro 35:32
The rent, the utilities, everything is cheaper for us out here. Okay, speaking of cheap, when are we? When do you think any of these, whether plant based bead has been on the market now for many decades, it's still not reached price or what you would call griddle parity. Cultivated meat, of course, is nowhere near griddle parody. Yet, despite the advances in media costs that you were mentioning, and I just have to give an aside, you talked about fetal bovine serum, and I was thinking, geez, I haven't heard that for so long. You remember when all of the critics of this space were saying, Oh, the fetal bovine serum is so expensive you'll never be able to scale this. And now none of them are using fetal bovine serum like it's totally in the past for this industry. It's amazing. But to the broader point, when do you think any of these products, whether biomass, like, let's say corn or a precision company, like your investee, onego bio, or a cultivated company, any of them plant based, are going to reach griddle parity with the commodity product that they are trying to displace.
Jim Mellon 36:34
Oh, Liverpool factory is already
Paul Shapiro 36:36
there,
Paul Shapiro 36:37
but they're not producing yet, right? They're not there. What's the product?
Jim Mellon 36:42
It's palm oil,
Paul Shapiro 36:44
okay?
Jim Mellon 36:44
And, of course, cocoa butter. Look this year, they'll produce 4000 tons.
Paul Shapiro 36:52
It's an enormous amount, and that's a stellar achievement.
Jim Mellon 36:56
Next time you come to the UK, please go. We'll arrange it for you and visit the facility. It's enormous.
Paul Shapiro 37:04
Little would make me happier one time I went to the UK and I visited corns facility, and I truly felt like I was a pilgrim going to Mecca on a pilgrimage. It was so impressive. They've got 40 meter tall bioreactors churning out a river of mycelium. I was so impressed. Little would make me happier than to go see palm oil being made by that. Let me rephrase the question for animal products, not for oils, but for animal products, either meat or dairy or eggs. When do you think griddle parody might be achieved? Yeah,
Jim Mellon 37:31
well, I I mentioned that the price of meat Lee's chicken is now at the level of the cheapest chicken in a supermarket. The question is scale. So it's how do you go from 20,000 liters to a million liters? And can you go to a million liters? And what's the cost of doing that, and what's the return on that money? And that is a question that's still not been answered. So if i had to rate everything, I would say that precision fermentation, within a couple of years, we're going to be making very big returns on it, and we'll take clean food group public, as I said, this year, and we'll probably make between 50 and 100 times our money
Paul Shapiro 38:15
on it. Amazing from Jim, I pray that that turns out to be true, because,
Jim Mellon 38:20
no, no, no, this. We need it, but it's also great for the industry, right? If we can do that,
Paul Shapiro 38:25
listen, I would be thrilled for you to have a 50 to 100x return, but I'm just saying the industry needs a good news story, right? There has to be some case study that people can look at and say, oh, I want to invest. You know, when, when? Beyond iPod, everybody wanted to get into what they perceived as the next beyond, right? Because they went from 25 to 240 shortly after the IPO. Is this amazing post IPO experience, but since then, it's been a 99% decline. Right now they're trading at even less than $1 right? So it's just been total oblivion for them. And this, as you point out, has really deterred a lot of people from the space, folks who might have been interested. In now or doing something else, whether AI or otherwise. And I really think that this industry needs some good news story. I neglected to mention one of the exits earlier, which was Tofurky, which, you know, it wasn't really a great exit. It was $40 million but this is for a company that's existed for like, three decades, and they were losing a lot of money as well every year so but they were acquired by a Japanese company for 40 million, which was a lot considering they didn't really have that many outside investors, so good for them. But you know, there really aren't any big news stories about any big exits, right? Or big
Jim Mellon 39:37
solar Foods has gone public on the Nordic Stock Exchange. I don't know if you know them. They make the so lean,
Paul Shapiro 39:45
yeah,
Paul Shapiro 39:45
even so when it's the orangish yellow powder, that it's good. I like it. It's like a high it's a high protein bacterial my memory is correct, and I liked it. It was good. I had it in a bar that they were demoing. I didn't realize that they were public. They traded. How have they been doing on the market?
Jim Mellon 40:01
I think the share price is fine. The problem is that it's trading by appointment. There's just almost no liquidity in the shares you've had. But you probably saw that the British company, which is that high protein sort of meal replacement called huel. Did you see that this week?
Paul Shapiro 40:21
Yeah, over a billion dollar acquisition.
Jim Mellon 40:26
So that's kind of similar, in a way, to what so lean does. And you know, solar has, has nominally gone public. I think that there'll be two or three notable events this year, mostly coming from us, actually, funnily enough. And obviously, I can't say too much, because, you know, there's a part of the money that we have is in a public domain. So I think that there'll be some good news flow. And we had a meeting today about all that stuff. And, yeah, it's, it's looking quite good, actually, blue Nilu, which we have a significant Chair of, you know, I they actually have a they cleverly went pivoted to the otoro cut of tuna, and their cost of production is significantly lower than the sale price. Now, whether they can get to scale or not, I don't know. I mean, this is going to be an issue, but I think, you know, Lou Cooper has and he's a great advocate for the industry.
Paul Shapiro 41:41
I know and respect Lou very well, and I think that if somebody can make it happen, it will be Lou, because he is a really, a really bright, hard working guy, so I admire him, and I can't
Jim Mellon 41:51
Justin Colbeck and Justin Colbeck with wild type, yeah,
Paul Shapiro 41:54
yeah. So both Justin and and Lou have been guests on this show before, and they are great guys, and I'm rooting hard for their success. There's an ocean of opportunity pun intended in creating cultivated seafood, I think, and hopefully,
Jim Mellon 42:11
the heavy metals and the blah, blah, blah, and they, you know, in the in the in the in tuna and in particular, and the way that smoked salmon. I come from Scotland. You know, it's a disgusting process the way that they make smoked salmon, or they grow smoked salmon, and so we need to do something about that. But, you know, bit by bit, there is news, Paul, you've persisted a long time with your podcast and your business, and both are going strong. I think that you and I are both on the cusp of like a golden period. And it's hard to say exactly how it will come out, but this will be a golden period, and this war, the Gulf War is a big wake up call to the Middle East, because they cannot go on being dependent on importing 95% of their food. They don't have a farming lobby, as I said earlier, and they have the money and the vision to do this stuff. So I think we'll find that the next great big cluster of development is in the Middle East.
Paul Shapiro 43:25
I certainly think that you're right, and I hope that you're right as well. And I'll tell you from my own perspective regarding whatever my own podcast or my own business at the better Miko, my entire philosophy is simply that I will beat my head against the wall and with the conviction that the wall will break first, that's it. You know, I just think the wall is going to bring going to break before my head. And so far, that has been true, although we'll see how we should
Jim Mellon 43:47
get you out to the Middle East, actually, because, you know, we want to create a sort of, we are creating a kind of cluster of companies that use shares, shared facilities to make product and tap into the local food companies and their distribution potential. And so we can have a separate conversation about another time.
Paul Shapiro 44:10
I can't wait to do that. Jim, what are the resources that have been useful for you? So you know you wrote moose law. We'll obviously link to that in the show notes for this episode of business, for good podcast.com, but are there other resources that you think people should check out that if they're interested in either investing in this space, or if they're interested in starting a company in the space, what would be useful for
Jim Mellon 44:32
them listening to you for a start? Or Alex Christ, I you know Bruce Friedrich, who I'm sure, as a good friend of yours has just written a book called meat, and I bought it, but I haven't read it, but I assume it's a very good book, and that would, that would, that's right up to date. Obviously, he's not looking at it from the kind of the same way that I would look at it, which is. From a financial sort of book point of view. But you know, I think that I am not going to give a sort of list of books that people should read. What I would say is just keep your eyes. Read lots of stuff about everything, and you will come across what we are talking about, and that's the way that you should get your information. I read. I get up at four o'clock every morning, and I spend the most of the morning reading, because reading is how you get information ideas, and it doesn't necessarily have to be directly on our industry, but something will play into what we're talking about. So for instance, microbial resistance is a big thing that you and I are pushing because we know that if we carry on with the current intensive animals system, we're going to have another pandemic will be based on excessive use of antibiotics in animals. That's a that's a given, basically, and so that's something that you wouldn't get necessarily. Reading a book about this industry or an article about this industry, but you get it because tangentially, it plays into what we're trying to do. Read about the Ukraine crisis, read about the war in the Middle East. Both of those create potential blocks to food. And you know, I mean people, as I understand it, in some parts of the Middle East are stripping supermarkets. They're hoarding food. That's a very bad thing, basically, because they can't get replacements. So people are now having to fly in food using jumbo jets, and that's incredibly expensive, and you can't get enough of it. So I wasn't alive then, nor were you. But in Berlin in 1949 or 48 the Russians blockaded Berlin, and they had the allies, had to fly in food and supplies, and there was a plane landing every 30 seconds at the Berlin Airport to supply them. And you know, you can't get yourself into that situation. So we need to bring this is the great thing about our industry, apart from everything to do with reducing animal cruelty, emissions, you know, pollution, adverse human health effects, we can bring the food and the security of food supply to neighborhoods all around the world. And that's, you know, that's your mission. That's my mission, and it's going to happen. It's, you know, been frustrating, and there's been a few people falling on the wayside. But you know that happens in any industry in this early stages, we're at the beginning of a food revolution, and you are a very important voice, because, you know, people like you don't do these podcasts, and generally speaking, it's not gonna be known about.
Paul Shapiro 47:54
Yeah, thank you. I definitely appreciate that. And I'll tell you in Bruce Friedrich's new book that you mentioned, your assumption. Is correct? It is very good. He mentions that about 500 of the first car startups failed, right? So we all know about Ford and the success, but there were, literally, according to his book, 500 startup failures in the car space. It doesn't mean that betting on cars is a bad idea for investors, it just means most of the startups are going to go under. That's just what happens with startups. So anyway, I hope that you're right. Let me conclude by asking you, Jim, are there companies that you wish existed that don't right, like you have already helped to assemble some companies from scratch that you've referenced here? Are there some companies or ideas for companies that you want somebody is not tackling a particular issue that you think needs to
Jim Mellon 48:40
be tackled? Well, bit of a left field thing here, Paul, we are, I'm an investor in robotics, which I think is the best use of AI, to be quite honest. And this last weekend, I did a talk at Oxford University with a professor of robotics there, we were talking about what the potential uses of robots are, and one of the key ones is improving crop wastage levels by using robots to pick crops, and particularly fruits, vegetables and Things like that, where there's a very high wastage, because they're being picked by human beings, and the a lot of them are getting wasted, and the robots, which exist now can pick them very delicately. They can pick them for 24 hours a day, and they are obviously not paid the minimum wage, or having to be put up in caravans or anything like that while the crops are being picked. So I think that that is an area that's really exciting, is the use of robotics in improving farming yields. Now we're not going to be involved, you and I in trying to grow. Uh, fruits, vegetables, cereals, in labs, because it's just doesn't make any sense. But improving the yield on those by using robotics is, I think, very exciting for the for the world
Paul Shapiro 50:13
indeed. And it's not lost on me that any improvement in agricultural yields is good for wildlife, right? Like low yield means more deforestation, high yield means less deforestation. So if you want more wildlife and more wildlife habitat, high yield agriculture is the way to go. Now, Jim, I want to say thank you. I'm grateful for your leadership in this space, both your thought leadership and your investing leadership, and I really can't wait to see what happens with these exits that you are forecasting here today, hopefully they will occur in 2026 as you mentioned, and it'll be a great boon, not just for new agurian and agronomics, but for the entire alternative protein sector. So thanks so much for all you're doing, Jim. I'm rooting for your success. Thank
Jim Mellon 50:54
you very much, Paul. I really love talking to you again, and hopefully I see you before five years are up.
Paul Shapiro 50:59
I hope so.
Jim Mellon 51:00
Okay. Thanks very much.
Paul Shapiro 51:01
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