This episode features exciting developments in the world of cultured pork loin. Nieves Martínez Marshall, Ph.D., co-founded Novel Farms in 2020 along with Michelle Lu. As the company's CEO, Nieves leads the early-stage food tech company dedicated to producing whole cuts of gourmet cell-based meat products using scalable and tunable scaffolds. They are the world's first company to recreate pork loin in the lab, and their flagship product is Iberian pork created by using a 'novel' (pun intended...

We're back after a summer break with our first ever "Sibling Special!" This episode features interviews with two incredible changemaker CEOs… who happen to be sisters: Nikita Michelson of Pearlita Foods, the world’s first cell-cultured mollusk company, and her sister Stephanie Michelson, a Forbes 30 under 30 winner, who heads up Jellatech, the world's first cell-based collagen and gelatin ingredient company.Episode highlights include: The wide range of foods and products that contain ani...

This episode features impact investor and entrepreneur Claire Smith. Claire is a well-known figure in the conscious capitalism space, who created the humane investment platform Beyond Investing. In 2019, Claire and her team launched what the media has dubbed the world’s first vegan-themed ETF (VEGN). An ETF is an investment product that consists of a bundle of securities that you can buy or sell on a stock exchange just like stocks and Claire's screens out all animal exploitation and fossil f...

For our final episode of the year, we're sharing a roundup of top 10 animal-free food news from 2021! Sharanya and Ulara dive into some of the biggest breakthroughs and exciting updates from the cutting-edge food technology companies they’ve featured on the podcast so far. Note: May drool while listening. Don't say we didn't warn you! Some episode highlights include: Super protein made from fungi harvested from Yellowstone National Park now available!Lab-grown mouse meat cat t...

Can tiny, lab-made replicas of the human brain FINALLY lead us to cure devastating illnesses such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and brain cancer? NETRI is a fast-rising French biotech startup that believes they absolutely can... while also eliminating costly, often inaccurate animal experiments along the way. Founded in 2018, NETRI has already grown to 30 staff globally, boasting a handful of organ-on-a-chip technology patents, including their flagship technology: brain-on-a-chip. Excitingly, ...

German biotechnology pioneer TissUse is making mini human bodies in the lab. Sounds creepy? It's not. Here's why: TissUse has developed a unique, patent-protected "human-on-a-chip" platform. Since 2012, this revolutionary technology has been replacing animal testing for pharmaceutical drug development, cosmetics, consumer products, chemicals, and food safety. TissUse's "human-on-a-chip" consists of miniaturized tissues and organs that can be connected together to mimic the whole human body. U...

TARA Biosystems has raised $21.3 million to date and is the world’s only company that generates human cardiac tissue—outside of the human body. Instead of testing on animals, researchers will be able to test drugs right on actual human tissue and the industry will be able to save time, money and unnecessary animal suffering throughout the drug development process. In this episode, we feature an eye-opening interview with TARA Biosystems’ CEO Misti Ushio, to learn more about how their breakthr...

In this episode, we revisit our Season 1 conversation with Dr. Sandhya Sriram, CEO and Co-Founder of cultured seafood maker Shiok Meats. In December 2020, Singapore became the first country to approve cultured cell-based meat for human consumption. So for this replay, we’ve included a special segment to discuss how diners are reacting to trying cultured meat (chicken) in the real world, for the first time! We then go back to our original episode in which we talk with Dr. Sriram about how her ...

California-based startup MeliBio is creating real honey that replicates AND actually improves upon bee-made honey—without ever exploiting or harming bees. In this eye-opening episode, CEO Darko Mandich tells us how MeliBio is creating vegan, bee-less honey that is based on the molecular composition of commercially available honey. MeliBio also plans to take their honey a step further and customize it to be better than the bee-made version.Darko also shares with us why it's so important we wor...

Let's face it. Zoos and aquariums suck for animals. In this episode, we hear from two companies that are creating encounters with wildlife without ever harming or disturbing animals. Some of their top projects include life-size realistic animatronic dolphins who can communicate with us and 3D cameras that enable us to see the world through the eyes of an elephant on the African savannah. In this episode, Roger Holzberg of Edge Innovations and Adrien Moisson of Wild Immersion tell us how their...