Billion Dollar Burger

Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food

By: Chase Purdy

Narrated by: Chase Purdy

The riveting story of the entrepreneurs and renegades fighting to bring lab-grown meat to the world.

The trillion-dollar meat industry is one of our greatest environmental hazards; it pollutes more than all the world's fossil-fuel-powered cars. Global animal agriculture is responsible for deforestation, soil erosion, and more emissions than air travel, paper mills, and coal mining combined. It also, of course, depends on the slaughter of more than 60 billion animals per year, a number that is only increasing as the global appetite for meat swells.

But a band of doctors, scientists, activists, and entrepreneurs have been racing to end animal agriculture as we know it, hoping to fulfill a dream of creating meat without ever having to kill an animal. In the laboratories of Silicon Valley companies, Dutch universities, and Israeli startups, visionaries are growing burgers and steaks from microscopic animal cells and inventing systems to do so at scale - allowing us to feed the world without slaughter and environmental devastation.

Drawing from exclusive and unprecedented access to the main players, from polarizing activist-turned-tech CEO Josh Tetrick to lobbyists and regulators on both sides of the issue, Billion Dollar Burger follows the people fighting to upend our food system as they butt up against the entrenched interests fighting viciously to stop them.

The stakes are monumentally high: Cell-cultured meat is the best hope for sustainable food production, a key to fighting climate change, a gold mine for the companies that make it happen, and an existential threat for the farmers and meatpackers that make our meat today.

Are we ready?

©2020 Chase Purdy (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Tetrick bio

Lots of good info on the current status of cell cultured meat, but ended up being much more of a bio on Josh Tetrick than anticipated.

Science-Fiction No More...Must Read for Carnivores

Chase Purdy does an excellent job of shining a light on a nascent industry that might have otherwise flown under the radar of average American consumers for several more years. He brings forth a collection of hard-charging personalities that are on the verge of disrupting the global food system (arguably for the better) when our civilization may need it the most. The science behind cell-based meat production would normally take a Ph.D. to understand, but Purdy breaks it down into plain English while weaving through the visionary egos that are leading the pack. If you are like me and love meat, but increasingly feel like that personal choice is questionable for the planet, Billion Dollar Burger is a must-read for a glimpse into a (possible) sustainable flexitarian future.

Good Factual Storyline, Not the Best Reader

This book offers an insightful look into the past. present, and likely future of cultured animal cell foods. The book was a bit heavy on —or focused on— Just Inc and its CEO, Josh Tetrick; yet their story is a look into the myriad government coercions bought by lobbyists of entrenched corporate interests in the US and other countries.

I don't know why Purdy read the book himself; sounding a bit like a stilted amateur poet at times, II don't think he did his own research and work justice.

All in all, a good read.