Focus on Arts and Ecology

“Think of a farm at a tiny scale.”

This is one way Memphis Meats explains their novel process for growing clean meat from cells rather than from animals.

But it's not just the minute scale of this farm that makes it unique: it is the transparency around the process. In an era where conventional, industrial-scale farming operations and slaughterhouses are more sequestered away from society than ever, Memphis Meats Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Dr. Uma Valeti is radically devoted to inviting consumers in to see how their meat is created.

In 2015, cardiologist-turned-entrepreneur Dr. Valeti founded the first clean meat startup in the United States. Following in the disruptive footsteps of Warby Parker, Casper, and Netflix, Memphis Meats is cutting out the middlemen. In this case, the middlemen are animals and slaughterhouses.

As Memphis Meats edges closer and closer to bringing their clean beef, poultry, and duck to market – fueled by investment from Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Cargill, and Tyson – they’re keen to welcome everyone to see how they are able to create meat without slaughter.

What inspired you to pivot from a career in cardiology to launch a clean meat startup?

From an outside perspective, I can see how it might look like a pivot. But to me, it honestly doesn’t feel that way. Cardiology was an absolutely essential stage in my career that allowed me the opportunity to even consider launching it as a business.

Starting from the beginning: I’ve loved the taste of meat since childhood but also saw the challenges associated with modern meat production from an early age. It wasn’t until 2005 that I first got the idea of producing meat from animal cells. That was during my cardiology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. Later in my interventional cardiology practice, I was involved in a study using stem cells to repair heart muscle tissue damaged by large heart attacks. I came to the realization that if stem cells could be used to regrow heart muscle tissue, they should be able to be used to grow animal muscle tissue – aka meat. I started by trying to convince others to start companies in this space because I thought this innovation could solve so many pressing global issues, but nobody would do it.

And so I decided to start one myself. I came to the realization that if I continued as a cardiologist, I might save maybe a few thousand lives over the next thirty years. But if I am successful in helping to change the way meat is made, I could positively impact billions of human lives and trillions of animal lives.

While we’re on the topic of the launch – as the first company in this industry, Memphis Meats had to deal with a lot of uncertainty and external skepticism in those early days. (Funnily enough, even GFI was skeptical at that point!) Truly it was only after we had people taste it for the first time that we knew this was absolutely real. In many ways, to me, that was the inception of this industry. It has been tremendously exciting to see it take off – and it’s clear to me that this is only the very beginning.