The Good Food Institute

And what'd you say that guy has an annual gross product of $41 million? That is

Good Food Institute's annual revenue, correct.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's White Pine County.

And he is reliving what he just experienced in Mongolia.

But I mentioned the, actually, just to give a little background, Good Food Institute was put together.

It's a nonprofit, 501C3.

People want the spectacle.

But on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, in the exact same industry, you have the Good Food Institute reporting massive exponential leaps in precision fermentation.

Wait, let's pause here.

Explain precision fermentation to the listener.

So I was actually running two clubs at once.

And actually at the very same time it happened, I founded the Good Food Institute's Alternative Protein Project chapter as well.

And I was on the EA exec board.

So the fall of my sophomore year...

Back in February of this year, we did a show entitled How Meat Can Save the Planet, the vegan case.

And it was a case about... uh created meat rather than shall we say natural meat it was with bruce friedrich who's the president of the good food institute friedrich's talk to good games seemed to suggest and he had a book out at the time meet how the next agricultural revolution will transform humanity's favorite food and our future.

Friedrich made the argument that all this technology was inevitable and in the future we're just going to be eating artificial meat rather than the real thing, which would, at least in his case, save the planet.

It's a nice idea, but in practice it may not be true.

Erin, congratulations on the piece, although it was very good, and it's the cover piece for Harper's.

Have I presented this right? Is your piece bursting the bubble, so to speak, of guys like Bruce Friesdrick?

I don't necessarily think that it's bursting the bubble, just sort of a dose of realism about how long it might take to get where Bruce and the Good Food Institute want to go.

And, you know, just injecting a bit of realism into the idealistic dream of cultivated meat.

We don't want to be replaced and not be part of that.

Yeah, I mean, so GFI, the Good Food Institute, we operate in six areas of the world.

One of those is Brazil.

And our most important partner in Brazil is also the world's largest meat company, JBS.

Uh, and that is the, uh, the reinvention of meat.

Uh, and as such, we have the honor of being joined today, uh, by Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of The Good Food Institute, uh, which is a global non-profit network of science think tanks working to accelerate innovation in both plant based and cultivated meats.

Uh, and they have, uh, more than two hundred and forty full time team members now around the world, uh, with scientists making up, uh, the plurality of the team thinking about these issues.

Uh, Bruce's journey, uh, through food innovation is, uh, is anything but conventional.

Uh, spent years running a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in DC.

Uh, taught inner city, uh, kids in Baltimore through Teach For America.

Uh, and then he went on to spend a decade working in animal welfare and public policy before founding the Good Food Institute back in twenty sixteen.

And his core insight at the time was ultimately, you know, trying to persuade, uh, billions of people simply to stop eating meat was unlikely to work.

They've already passed 8,000. in a study from earlier this year knight found that vegan diets are well digested by both dogs and cats the study found that meat-free diets are broadly comparable in digestibility to meat-based diets but that they benefit from a significantly reduced environmental impact as we mentioned we put links to the stories and there's also a link to the survey in the show notes so if you'd like to know more the survey link is there Also happening in the news, at the end of July, the Oregon Health and Sciences University board of directors passed a resolution to begin reducing primate breeding and experiments at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton.

Over to Brazil, the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, my pronunciation is not good, the Unicamp and the Good Food Institute of Brazil have filed a patent application with the World Intellectual Property Organization for a fermentation process that uses plant waste.

So that's stuff like potato peels, oat husks and acai residues to create an agent for use in the range of products to make them smell better.

By using solid-state fermentation, they can turn these discarded foods into an ingredient that smells like passion fruit.

Now, it's my pleasure to introduce tonight's esteemed speaker, Bruce Friedrich.

Bruce is founder and president of the Good Food Institute, GFI, a global science nonprofit with affiliates in the US, India, Israel, Brazil, APAC, and Europe.

Climate charity evaluat-evaluator Giving Green has selected GFI as the top climate charity for impact each year for the past five years, and the New York Times journalist Ezra Klein writes that GFI is second to none in the influence of its public policy efforts, its centrality to the ecosystem of companies and researchers, and its international footprint.

Nature features Bruce's new book, Meat, as one of his five best science picks, and Publishers Weekly included Meat on its list of the ten best new releases in science writing.

Right.

It's for meat eaters.

Um, and yes, GFI, you know, the Good Food Institute is not a vegan or a vegetarian organization, and the book is very much not like a moral diatribe.

Um, I really do-

What I started to see was a really clear need for a better food system, not just for pets, but for people as well.

And so I started diving into that problem, which is a huge one as we all know, and that led me to the Good Food Institute, where I worked for almost four years leading the startup ecosystem engagement and also connecting the industry together, so promoting collaboration.

After that, I joined Big Idea Ventures, and I had worked with them while I was at GFI, and so it was a pleasure to be able to go over to the venture side and continue helping.

And what similarities or differences do you see between food and pet food?