Why This Cardiologist/'kɑrdɪ'ɑlədʒɪst/ Is Betting/'betiŋ/ That His Lab-Grown Meat Startup Can Solve the Global Food Crisis/'kraɪsɪs/
The future of your entrée is quietly growing in Memphis Meats' lab.
By Jeff Bercovici
Uma Valeti remembers the first time he really thought about where meat comes from. A cardiologist/'kɑrdɪ'ɑlədʒɪst/ turned founder, Valeti grew up in Vijayawada/ˌvi:dʒəjə'wɑ:də/, India, where his father was a veterinarian/'vɛtərə'nɛrɪən/ and his mother taught physics. When he was 12, he attended a neighbor's birthday party. In the front yard, people danced and feasted on chicken tandoori/tæn'dʊri/ and curried goat/ɡot/. Valeti wandered around to the back of the house, where cooks were hard at work decapitating/dɪ'kæpɪtet/ and gutting/gʌt/ animal after animal to keep the loaded platters coming. "It was like, birthday, death day," he says. "It didn't make sense."
Valeti remained a carnivore/'kɑrnɪvɔr/ for more than a decade, until after he had moved to the U.S. for his medical residency. But in time, he found himself increasingly disturbed by food-borne illness. He was especially grossed out by the contamination/kənˌtæməˈneʃən/ that happens in slaughterhouses/'slɔtɚ/ when animal feces get mixed in with meat. "I loved eating meat, but I didn't like the way it was being produced," he says. "I thought, there has to be a better way."
In a tiny R&D suite in a nondescript office building in the unglamorous/ʌn'glæmərəs/ Silicon Valley exurb/ˈɛkˌsɚb/ of San Leandro, a lanky, red-haired molecular biologist named Eric Schulze is fiddling with a microscope, and I'm about to get a look at that better way. Like the specimen he'll show me, Schulze is something of a hybrid. Formerly a Food and Drug Administration regulator, he's now an educator, TV host, and senior scientist at Memphis Meats, the company that Valeti founded in 2016 and whose laboratory/ˈlæbrəˌtɔri/ he is showing me.
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