Why I Want Clean Meat

Drew Tunney
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

I like eating meat. I usually have it for lunch and almost always for dinner. But I feel a little guilty eating it. I turn a blind eye to how it gets to my plate. I know it’s not a great process and if I knew the details about it I’d be less likely to consume it. My friend works for a food delivery service in Connecticut (it’s more farm to table than start up). We had dinner the other night and he said something that’s stuck with me.

“If you eat meat you should be comfortable killing that animal once in your life”

I’m not sure I fully agree with it, but it makes you think. I’m definitely not comfortable killing a pig, he is.

I’ve tried not eating meat for a few weeks. It’s hard to get full without it. I do like the flavor but what I like most is that it it fills my appetite.

So when I read this article about Memphis Meats, their mission resonated with me. This is their solution to the problem of how meat is created today.

“Instead of using animals as pieces of technology to convert plants into proteins to make things that we like to eat, drink and wear, we can just use biology to make those things directly,” said Seth Bannon, a co-founder of the upstart venture firm Fifty Years and an early investor in Memphis Meats.

I want them to succeed. I want to eat meat that is grown in a lab, not from caged cattle in slaughterhouses. I’m not sure how other people feel. I drink Soylent and it’s very polarizing (I’ll write about this in the future). Would people view Memphis Meats products as fake meat? Or is it an alternative that works just fine?

Impossible Foods burger @ Momofuku

I know very little about ag-tech and there appear to be a few companies investing in clean meat including Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat but with various approaches. Momofuku serves an Impossible burger, I’m going to put that on my todo list. I hope meat gets “cleaner”.

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