Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Mark, welcome to the business for good podcast. Hi, how are you? Great to see you. I was just looking before we were getting started at this photo from eight years ago when I was in your office. And it reminded me of when I visited you back in 2016 to see where the world's first cultivated burger was produced.

So this is only three years after the fact then. And I went to the receptionist in the building and I said, Oh, hi, I'm here to see Dr. Mark Post. And she said. Dr. Post is in California. I said, Oh, no, no, no. I've got a, I've got an appointment with him. I got an appointment with this guy. I came all the way from California to see him in the Netherlands.

So I hope he's not in California. She goes, no, no, he's in, he's in California. And thankfully she was wrong and we got together, but it was a fun time. So, thank you again for hosting me back then. That was great.

Mark Post: Yeah, I still don't know why she thought I was in California or why she had any clue where I was to begin with, but yeah, [00:01:00] okay.

Paul Shapiro: So let me start back then. So, you know, 2016 is when, we met up in your office. And this was three years after the first cultivated burger. Of course, nobody at that time was using the term cultivated. They were saying cultured or queen or who knows what some detractors might be saying like in vitro or lab grown.

but you had just debuted it three years earlier and we were in your office in 2016 chatting about it. If You could have predicted what would happen in the eight years subsequent and say in 2024 that the industry would be where it is today. What would you have gotten right? And what do you think you would have gotten wrong?

Mark Post: Well, apparently I did that three years before that, at the launch of the hamburger, I said it will take 10 years before it hits the market. and,

Paul Shapiro: I guess depending on hits the market, I mean, it wasn't Singapore within 10 years. So at least something happened.

Mark Post: Right. So it wasn't that far off. And,obviously I'm not psychic and I'm not really good at [00:02:00] telling the future, but I, I did realize that still a lot had to happen, before this would be a marketable product.

And, you know, various fronts, technological front scale up, cost effectiveness and, and what have you. so. I think we are, slower than I actually thought. I thought by now we would have some level of market penetration, if you like. but yeah, it turned out to be a, a host of factors that, delayed it a little bit, but not by too much.

I think it's in retrospect, it's reasonable that, this time was necessary to make it into a full blown animal free product.

Paul Shapiro: So, I'm eager to hear about why you think it's taken longer than anticipated, but before we get that, let me ask you what's gone faster. What has happened? Was it the more, more funding than you anticipated?

More companies joining the space? Like what's actually happened faster or more vigorously than you would have anticipated. And don't worry, I will then ask you why it's gone [00:03:00] slower.

Mark Post: Right. well, no question. The, uptake by many of our friends and, and competitors and, you know, getting to 160 companies worldwide is something that I never imagined would happen so fast.

So that was, and is for sure a very satisfying thing to see that that has happened because You can only imagine what would have happened if after 10 years, we would still be the only ones to do this. They would, you know, look at it. These are weird. so, I'm, I'm very happy that that happened. And, and also, you know, when we launched in 2013, of course, We never anticipated that and then I'm, I'm extremely satisfying to see that this is the result.

Paul Shapiro: Sure. So hundreds of companies in the space, whereas of course, in, at the beginning of even 2015, there were zero, right? Like, I mean, and I mean, when the first edition of queen meat came out, the number of companies [00:04:00] was, you know, maybe a dozen or two dozen. And now, six years later, it's blossomed into hundreds of companies.

Now some, you know, in that cycle have already failed, you know, some have gone by the wayside. but some have raised multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, really huge gargantuan amounts of money. In fact, if you look at the funnel of investment, you know, there's only a few companies that like take about 80 percent or so of all the investment that's gone into this space.

And most of me, it is one of the biggest. And so let me ask you. What stage you guys are at right now? So if you had regulatory approval, how long do you think before you could not just be selling in one restaurant in the way that each store upside foods did for a little bit of time, but actually have something meaningfully in the market, like on a restaurant menu.

that's a chain of restaurants or in a grocery store.

Mark Post: Yeah, you know, assuming that you would start building the factory designing and building the factory after you have regulatory, if you've received [00:05:00] regulatory approval, realistically, it still takes about two to three years to make a factory completely, in, in operation and at scale, and you still have just, you still have just one factory.

so to, yeah, to get at scale that you can supply, for instance, a, you know, retail, chain, then, that after that moment, it still takes four or five years to get to. A real scale, now what most companies have done is they have not waited until receiving regulatory approval to start scaling up, which is somewhat of a risk, but also understandable, given that it there's such a long lead time between, you know, designing the factory and actually having an operation.

So, yeah,

Paul Shapiro: I think some of these companies have the sense that they need to build the plane while flying while while in the air, right? Like, they have to essentially just start building and hope that their [00:06:00] investors or governments that are giving them grants or loans are going to keep funding them under.

Yeah. And

Mark Post: I think. You know, judging that the regulatory approval is not the biggest hurdle was actually a good judgment call. we, we have seen some early regulatory approvals and some, right now in, in larger, countries like the, the U. S. and we all felt, I think, that the regulatory approval Was not the greatest hurdle.

And we, I guess we were right in that investors not always believe that. So we,that was for sure. One of the criteria that investors looked at at the regulatory approval, but we, we have always felt this, that this would be feasible and not too much of a hurdle.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, yeah. So let me go back to that question about what has taken longer because some things have gone really amazingly.

A lot of funding in the space, not enough, but still a lot compared to where we were a decade ago and a lot of companies in the space. But as you pointed out, you expected that the there'd be more commercial traction than there [00:07:00] has been since the burger was debuted 11 years ago. And so why, what has been the biggest hurdle?

Is it lack of large bioreactors? Is it media costs? Like what are the hurdles that have not been overcome that led to it going slower than anticipated?

Mark Post: Yeah, I think it's a combination of the cost of goods, media growth factors, other components. And that actually kind of stall scaling up scaling up is at this stage incredibly expensive because of the high cost of goods and we are.

Essentially dependent on third parties to make those cost of good cheaper, like, like the growth factors, like the nutrients. and so that combination of high cost of goods and therefore high cost of scaling up, led to a slowdown of scale up and, yes, the scale up itself technologically is also.

Something that nobody has ever done for these type of cells before. So it required a lot of [00:08:00] R and D to actually make that happen.

Paul Shapiro: Do you think there is still more R and D that needs to happen or at least speaking for most of me, if you right now were given the amount of capital that you would need to build a factory, would you still need to invent new technology in order to make it an economically feasible business model?

Or is it just a matter of scaling up the technology you already have?

Mark Post: we would still need to make technological advances. These are, this is not rocket science. This has been done in other industries. you know, I'm thinking of very efficient use of the culture medium. growing cells in single cell suspension.

There are a number of Things that you need to go through to in, in the end, make it a cost effective bioprocess. and for sure economizing the medium use is a big part of that. And we're just at the beginning of that, that phase.

Paul Shapiro: Sure. So just to be clear, [00:09:00] I believe that the answer to this question is implicit in what you just said, but in all of your time in working, On this issue of trying to grow real meat without animals, which goes back way before a decade.

Obviously the burger was the culmination of years of yours and others work as well. So I don't know if it's been 15, 20 or so years that you have been working on this. Has there been anything that leads you to think that it cannot be done? I don't mean that, you know, you can't produce, obviously people were producing, but that it cannot be done at scale as something that's going to rival the cost of animal meat.

no, there's

Mark Post: not. and I see this as a area where there are lots of hurdles. they can all be overcome. It's not that any of the hurdles are sort of insurmountable, but just, it's just a stack of them. So you have to work diligently, diligently through them, and, and overcome them one by one, and eventually that will happen.

it's just a number of hurdles that is, Yeah, big and [00:10:00] therefore it requires a long time and a lot of effort and a lot of people and a lot of money to get there.

Paul Shapiro: Sure. So one of the key factors in whether those hurdles are going to be overcome seems to be, the money that you just mentioned, like how much money are people willing to invest in essentially a pre revenue industry for for how long?

And the, there are a few journalists who continually write the obituary for this industry, right? Like it's sort of the same group of journalists who keep on writing this. And, you know, one of them had a major column in the New York times recently that received a huge amount of attention. And no doubt that that has a, an effect on prospective investors, people who would be thinking about investing.

And then they see in the New York times, an obituary for the cultivated meat industry before it's even been born. Basically. And, the question then is how can you fundraise in that type of environment? So needless to say, there's less money going into cultivated meat now than there was two, three years ago.

And the question I would have [00:11:00] for you is, do you think it's possible? To raise the type of capital that will be needed to overcome the hurdles, given the environment that we're in right now, not just from the media perspective, but just in the capital landscape that we see right now, which is a lot drier than it was a couple of years ago,

Mark Post: I think it's possible, but you need to, by through your R and D rebut the assumptions and the, and the statements that were made in the New York times, comment, they can be rebutted.

But you need to provide that proof. So we were somewhat fortunate, not somewhat, we actually were hugely fortunate to start this in a era where, you know, investors didn't know where to put their money because they had so much and they had to find kind of purposes for it, that was a somewhat unrealistic environment.

I think that we started in, so now it becomes more realistic and you have to show. Basically, the [00:12:00] data and, and the facts and show, okay, you know, we can get this into a, or we have gotten this into a cost effective by a process, given that maybe some of the cost of goods is still somewhat lacking behind.

and, and then, yes, there is still, sufficient investment around and sufficient knowledgeable investors, that understand who understand this and will continue to invest.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Then the regulatory piece has to come into play at some point in Europe. And so with with companies now having garnered approval for certain products and countries like the U.

S. and Israel and Singapore. Do you think that Europe will follow suit? Obviously, Europe has been GMOs. Not that cultivated meat requires genetic engineering, needless to say, but, the continent has not been particularly friendly to biotechnological biotechnologically derived foods for the most part.

And the question I would have is, is Is it [00:13:00] possible or probable that the EU is going to grant regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat anytime soon?

Mark Post: It's, it's definitely possible. and so, so, so far within Europe, we have seen mostly, Italy, kind of being opposed and there may be other countries who are opposed.

Mind you, Europe has a very, regulated way to, approve novel food. So the first process is a scientific process, just like everybody everywhere else. And in that they were very advanced, they were very much earlier than most other jurisdictions. Having said that, the scientific process of approval is always followed by a political process in Europe.

And then you need a qualified majority, for the recommendations of EFSA to be, translated into, market, approval. And Italy in itself is not a qualified majority in the large [00:14:00] set of countries that, and population that, comprises Europe. But if this gets kind of into a snowball effect with other, countries following suit, then it may become a problem.

Paul Shapiro: Right. And I think that France has also taken some,skeptical view of, cultivated meat. In addition to Italy, I know that even while there are lawmakers there who would certainly like to ban the sale of it, I did a, I did a debate that was sponsored by Le Monde, the, the big newspaper there in Paris.

And it was really remarkable to me, like how dramatic the sentiment toward one and what people perceive as natural foods is in France, at least based on the audience that we had there at that debate and, you know, a point that I was making was there's very little that's natural about how we produce meat today.

Most people don't want to know how we produce meat today. In fact, you know, people can take tours of [00:15:00] cultivated meat facilities, whereas usually they don't really favor taking tours and slaughter plants and and and places where animals are locked up in cages on farms. So, I don't know what the best antidote to the.

Message about so called natural foods is obviously the concern really has to do with protectionism for the cattle industry and other animal agriculture industries. It's not so much about natural food, but what do you say when people recoil and say, Oh, you know, you're growing meat in a lab. I mean, what is your response to that?

Mark Post: well, I, I like you, I kind of contest what not what natural, meat production is. But what natural in itself means, and, that is maybe somewhat of an academic debate. but if you bring it down to, okay, what's the, what does this actually mean for you? I, I frequently ask the question here to general audiences and, consumers, do you [00:16:00] actually think that milk comes from a cow?

and most people think that milk comes from a cow and it's like, well, okay, you know, you're wrong. it comes from a factory and, milk is a reconstituted product. And a lot of people don't know that. So there's a big gap in knowledge, as you have referred to a knowledge, how technological and processed our food actually is processed food is another.

Kind of nice, term that is pretty vague and,not really applicable to anything you do or applicable to everything we do. the, I think you have to go beyond that a little bit and say, what, what does natural for people mean? Does that mean, you know, it's healthier for you. It's safe and those types of things.

So, I try to get behind that, sentiment and say, okay, You know, once this is provided is, declared as safe by our food authorities and, it's established that it's [00:17:00] safe, would you still be concerned? and,typically the answer is no, the, the other way I try to do it is,use,the hot dog example.

where say, okay, you know, you, are eating hot dogs. Do you consider them natural? and, do you actually know what they are made of? And, and so if you don't, and you don't consider them natural, why don't then you, do you then have a problem with a hamburger that's made through cultivation?

Paul Shapiro: Right.

Yeah, I think that's a great example. I also love using the seedless watermelon example. It's like hard to think of something less natural than a seedless watermelon. And yet, and yet everybody wants them. Nobody wants a seeded watermelon anymore. They want seedless watermelons. And, you know, if you read about how it's done, I mean, it's perfectly safe, but it's not that savory when you hear it, right?

and the, you know, and the idea of producing fruits that just don't have seeds, is, you know, a far cry from what nature intended, assuredly.

Mark Post: It's like, you know, how would you [00:18:00] think of a human race that don't have a reproductive organs, right? Right. Yes.

Paul Shapiro: Yes. Yeah. Maybe not so natural. but, but maybe there'd be fewer environmental problems with less of us.

I don't know. That could be another, for sure.

Mark Post: That would be, yes. Let's not go there.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. What do you see as the future for this industry? You have some companies like eat just that want to build gigantic bioreactors, like hundreds of thousands of liters. You have other companies like fork and good that really envision a series of smaller, maybe 1000 liter reactors.

What do you think is the future? You think it's going to be a massive bioreactor or lots of smaller bioreactors and that, and what impact does that have on the cost structure of having to build these facilities and operate them?

Mark Post: yeah, yeah, I, I don't really know that, it's probably larger than a thousand liter, but definitely less than, 350, 000 liter and it's [00:19:00] somewhere in between, it may be, 40, 50, 000 liter or something as maximum.

The, you have to think about what the advantage is of, scaling up and scaling up the, is primarily. Advantage in, somewhat cheaper equipment because it doesn't scale up linearly with the size of the bioreactor, the cost. and for sure, it, saves personnel, because it's less. You know, the larger the bioreactor is, the less amount of people you need to operate, not the less amount of people, but relatively speaking,the amount of people that you need to operate it.

So it will cut on the, operation costs and on the equipment cost. It will obviously not cut the consumable cost of the medium that you need and, and all the other supplies that you need. So there will be some cost saving. And I think in the far future, when We think of, you know, are we going to save [00:20:00] like a couple of cents on a hamburger by scaling up?

Yes, that will happen. are people interested in a couple of cents cost saving for hamburgers? Most likely, because that's what they're doing now as well. So, in the end, the industry will seek that kind of balance between, the largest size of bioreactors imaginable, and sort of the practical risk of sometimes having a contamination and having to throw away the content of the by area,

Paul Shapiro: right?

I actually live near what is purported to be the largest mammalian cell culture bioreactor on the planet. It's 25, 000 liters. and it's near me in Sacramento. And, you know, apparently they don't have that much contamination there. But I will say, You know, if you have contamination and you got 200, 000 liters that you have to throw out, it was a lot worse than, you know, throwing out in one or 2000 liters, but it's a lot more steel to build a bunch of small reactors.

Just because there's so much more surface area and

Mark Post: right.

Paul Shapiro: But again, it's not,[00:21:00]

Mark Post: and it's not a proportional increase amount of steel to increase your bioreactor space. So, so, yes, there is gain. There's gain to be had there. but balanced against the risk of contamination. And I agree with you. This is what I hear from people who have been doing this for a much longer time than, than we have that.

You know, you will run a risk of contamination, but it's probably one or 2 percent of the total amount of runs that you are having.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. and of course, you know, smaller reactors is more piping and instrumentation. Like it's just a, it's, it's a lot, but who knows? I mean, so somebody will figure it out and prove one side or the other wrong here, but I think, yeah, but I, but I

Mark Post: think the, the, the scaling up will result in sort of a scent, scent wise.

decrease in price of the hamburgers and, and people will be interested in that. That's there's no question. They, they are now interested in it. So they will continue to be interested in it.

Paul Shapiro: Well, if we get to the point where we're worrying about [00:22:00] one or two cents per hamburger, that will mean that cultivated meat has come down in price so dramatically that it'll be a wonderful day.

cause right now, you know, we're, we're still, orders of magnitude higher than a hamburger is, sadly in the cultivated hamburger space. but let me then ask you, when do you think that era will be so think about plant based meat as one example today in the U. S. plant based meat is not even reached 1 percent of the volume of animal meat, right?

So you have ubiquitous availability of plant based meat. It's in every big box grocery chain. It's on many fast food menus and so on. but by volume, it's still less than 1 percent of the total meat industry in the United States. And it's obviously much even less around the world. So if plant based meat, which has been on the market for decades and has had billions in the last one decade put into it is not at 1%.

How long do you think before cultivated animal products may reach 1 percent of their category, whether it's in meat or some other animal products that it's trying to displace?

Mark Post: Yeah, I [00:23:00] think you cannot extrapolate from that because, don't forget that until maybe three, four years ago, the plant based products were exclusively marketed to vegetarians and vegans.

So they were not really interested in building a big market. Thanks to beyond and impossible that has changed. but it also has shown that it's tough to convert, hardcore meat eaters into eating plant based, substitutes part of that was the price that now is coming down dramatically. And,I don't know how it is in the U S but here in Europe currently plant based, alternatives are cheaper than meat itself.

so that. Will be a boost for these products. I think, we also have to admit that the quality is still not quite there yet and that, you know, meat is still very widely available and very, very cheap. So why would people do that? so there are a couple of arguments that are, that are kind of holding this industry up a little bit, [00:24:00] although I think in the long run, it has a great prospect.

part of those arguments are different for cultivated meat and especially sort of the perceived nutritional value and the healthiness, if you like, of meat products. We are all, we all grew up with the myth that meat is very healthy for you and is a wholesome type of, of meal. So I think part of that argumentation will be different for cultivated meat than for a plant based.

And I think. We will see in the next, 10 years or so, a, faster rise in both alternate.

Paul Shapiro: I certainly hope so. And, in my own experience, I feel like there are still lots of people. Who just want what they perceive as the so called real thing that no matter how good plant based gets, they want what they think of as the real thing.

And I don't know what will win out. I presume it'll be some [00:25:00] combination of these types of technologies, whether it's animal cell culture or plant protein isolation or fungi fermentation and so on. presumably it'll be some combination thereof, but it does, it does seem to me like in the same sense as with the clean energy space.

That, you know, you don't know whether, you know, it's going to be wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, you're probably going to need some combination of them. And so I'm glad that people are pursuing all of those technologies right now. And the same is so here. and I feel like they're among some in this space is this feeling that, well, you know, cultivated is so far away that is it the best if you, if you only have a limited number of investor dollars, should they be going to plant based or fungi fermentation or cultivated.

And to me, it seems like It's so queer. That people want meat. I mean, I don't know how else to put it. Like many people just really want to meet. And I wish I weren't so i'd be thrilled i'd do anything to make it so that people would be happy to eat other foods but I think people are [00:26:00] happy to eat Many people are happy to eat meat alternatives and I think that's great.

but a lot of people just want me

Mark Post: Yeah, but I, I think you're right, of course, because that's what we observe. But I also have some indication that people are looking for alternatives, because they do see, you know, if it may be a little bit different in the U S but here in the Netherlands or in Western Europe, there is not a single day that goes by where you open a newspaper, Without a reference to, the environmental impact of meat eating and dairy products, not a single day.

So people are completely flooded with information that this is so, and they were obviously already aware of the animal welfare issues and now the environmental issues, come on top of that. And so there is, I think, a. a genuine, [00:27:00] expectation that eventually we will need to look for alternatives for meat.

And that, and then they choose between the different categories. And that's then based on quality and price and perceived healthiness and all those types of things.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I'm envious of that fact. I can assure you that is not the case here in the United States that people were inundated with that, with that information.

In fact, just yesterday, I was doing a briefing for lawmakers in the California State Capitol in Sacramento, and I can assure you that it was, it seemed it was seemingly revelatory to them that animal agriculture has a large contribution to climate change and, you know, to people in Western Europe that that may be a matter of common sense.

Thanks. but even in California, where, you know, this is the most climate advanced state on public policy, than any state in the country, probably, and even there. Lawmakers were really not so aware of this now, some are, some are, [00:28:00] but not most, it's, it's not a big part of the climate agenda here.

Mark Post: Yeah, well, here, here in, in this country, you would have to live under a rock,

because literally every newspaper pays attention to this. I am. Most. You know, to the fact, okay, you know, people know it by now, you could look,

Paul Shapiro: maybe we Americans like living under a rock. I don't know. maybe people just have too much dissonance because we eat so much meat that we like to pretend that it doesn't have any impact.

But, I don't know. I do want to ask you, like, you know, this is now, as you pointed out, taken longer than you had anticipated. but there is a lot of progress. You are now in your mid sixties. Presumably, you know, you're going to live maybe, let's say, two, three more decades, right? And my guess Let's keep it at three.

Yes. Let's keep it at three. Okay. All right. My guess is that [00:29:00] this is what you will be known for. You know, many people do many things in their lives, but, this is when you die, your obituaries are going to, you know, refer to you as essentially, you know, the pioneer or the godfather, so to speak, of, you know, The cultivated meat movement as the first person to debut a cultivated meat product to the world and then having pursued this as your career for such a long time now.

So when that time comes, let's say it's 30 years from now, what do you think the world would look like as far as our meat production is concerned? So not five or 10 years from now, but like 30 years from now, when people are getting to write, ready to write your obituaries is going to be Mark Post, the guy who.

was tried valiantly, but didn't quite bring this industry to fruition. Or is it going to be Mark Paz, the guy who was triumphant and actually helped to win humanity away from a diet centered around the factory farming of animals?

Mark Post: Yeah. I hope very much the last, not [00:30:00] for myself, but for, you know, the impact that it then would have had.

yeah, you know, if, if this. It, gets to price parity and indeed if the traction and the consumer acceptance will be what we expect it to be. this has a great future. and you know, I, I keep saying, you know, if you walk into a supermarket 20 years from now and you see those two identical products where one, is made without killing an animal and without the CO2, emission and.

without antibiotics and, and what have you, and they are identical and they're kind of the same price, then it would be unimaginable that you would still select,slaughtered, meat. in my mind. so this is going to take a long time, but eventually both plant based and I think also plant based is going to increase more and more and more.

based on, you know, observations that I now do in, people under the age of 30, where really [00:31:00] unimaginable percentages of those populations are vegetarian or vegan. so gradually moving to a plant based diet, but I think The, cultivated meat still has a very, very great future ahead of us. And, I think we all should hope that it's that case because it's really necessary.

We don't have really. Another option.

Paul Shapiro: Indeed. Yeah. So do you think it can happen soon enough? Obviously, the, the climate problem is getting worse as we continue to emit more and more. We continue to deforest more and more. if you're saying, well, 20 years from now, this is the way that things are going to be.

Is that soon enough? Or do you think that there might be a time problem that we just can't get ahead of?

Mark Post: Well, it's never soon enough, right? We would, we need those solutions right now. climate scientists say that every day, if we don't, if even if we would cut CO2 emission to zero, at, at this moment, [00:32:00] we would still go to somewhere between one and a half and two degrees of, of global warming.

So preferably you would have it right now. but yeah, that's unfortunately not going to happen as, as it's not going to happen for any. climate action, I think, that we can think of at the moment, but yeah, we have to do the best we can.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, that's the way that I see it. It's like, what else are you going to do?

You're just not try. and, that's why I have devoted my life to trying to solve this problem of how to slash the number of animals who humanity is farming and using for food. Are there things that don't yet exist, Mark, that you wish did? Are there any companies or technological problems that you hope somebody listening might take the mantle on and try to, try to solve it?

Mark Post: yeah, I guess, you know, there are still some. Some issues with some of the components in medium, like, albumin, insulin, and a couple of other [00:33:00] larger proteins that a lot of people are now working on that and they are improving and, and cost reducing the, the production. But in the end, we need all, we need other alternatives for that, and not a recombinant protein.

So that's really. What what currently in the longer run, a holdup is going to be in, in the, the, the reaching price parity unless we have, alternatives, plan based alternatives, other protein,single cell protein alternatives, Because recombinant proteins alone is not going to help them.

Paul Shapiro: And so this is something that you would see not just most of me trying to do in house, but maybe somebody else who comes up with a technology in order to reduce the cost of media in this way that you would become a buyer of their product.

Mark Post: yeah, yeah, whoever does this and we now see mostly third parties, develop these alternatives and that's a, that's a good [00:34:00] thing.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Well, finally, Mark, let me ask you, are there any resources that have been helpful for you? Obviously you have led in a very storied career here in the space, but has there been any resources that have been useful for you? People who look at you and think, oh, I really admire what he's accomplished.

I'd like to do something similar with my life. Anything books, speeches, anything else that you would recommend that people check out?

Mark Post: Oh, I haven't,thought about that, that much. Personally, I look at the scientific literature, and fortunately, a lot of our colleagues and now also publicly funded colleagues are producing that scientific literature.

and that's what I'm looking at because. That typically has the rigor and the background that that required to is required to move forward. and I also like it because it puts, a lot more credibility behind the entire process. I think.

Paul Shapiro: Are there any journals in particular that you find useful?

Mark Post: No, there's a [00:35:00] set of journals right now.

you know, nature food is, is a big one at the moment. they, they are very. proactive in publishing about this. and it's a high quality journal, so that's. That's one that I, like a lot.

Paul Shapiro: What was the name of you said? The second word was food, nature, food, nature, food. Okay. Got it. Okay, cool.

We'll link to that in the show notes for this episode of business for good podcast. com so that people can go check out nature food, but Mark, I really appreciate all that you have done to advance the field, and I will tell you that. It is very common that I hear from people when they tell me about their experience reading the book, Queen Meat, and I ask them, you know, what in particular do you like about it?

And there's one scene in the book that people repeatedly come back to, and that is when you take the two burgers that are, you know, worth over 300, 000 U. S. dollars and, you know, Put them in a box and put them on your bicycle to bike home. And I asked you, why don't you just take a taxi? You know, why don't you just take a [00:36:00] taxi?

And you didn't want to pollute. And so you had a few hundred thousand dollars of cargo on a hot day, by the way, a hot day in the Netherlands on your bicycle, biking home, and then put it in your own refrigerator in your home overnight. And it's like this little piece of history that people just can't believe.

happened. So, that entire story of how the burgers got from your lab on a bike, into your home, on a train into London smuggled in, is, is definitely one that people love. So, thanks for providing that fun piece of history here and I'll be rooting for your success and very much hoping to be at a Muslim meat plant in the future that is going to be churning out millions of pounds of delicious cultivated meat, be a real dream come true.

Mark Post: Yeah, you're welcome. And by the way, we do have, I now do have the video of that bike ride.

Paul Shapiro: Ah, very nice. So we should definitely, I would love to get it. I'll, I'll hit you on there after this conversation. All right. Okay. Thanks, Mark.