Through this entire season of Feeding 10 Billion, two names that have cropped up in nearly every episode are the two California based companies who are pioneering plant-based meats: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Beyond Meat is a ten year old company that had the biggest IPO in North America in the last two decades this year. Beyond makes meat directly from plants just like Impossible Foods which started retailing in Michelin starred restaurants in 2016 and is now driving more traffic to Burger King thanks to its plant-based burger aka the Impossible Whopper. It has actually led to Burger King’s best quarter in the last four years. On this special episode of Feeding 10 Billion, we feature a conversation between the senior executives of these companies and representatives of organisations like FAIRR, Centre for Biological Diversity and Institute for the Future’s Future Food Lab, along with Varun Deshpande the Managing Director of India at the Good Food Institute. At the blockbuster second iteration of the Good Food Conference in San Francisco, which was sold out and saw 900 people attend, this session looked at some of the weightiest issues surrounding how plant-based and cultivated meat have the potential to solve our most pressing sustainability challenges like antibiotic resistance, global malnutrition and poverty, climate change as well as natural resource utilization. But this is a massive undertaking that needs to balance biodiversity as well as global access to good food with companies and investors who want good food to be good business as well. Show Notes- This episode features panelists from the panel: The “Why”: Mitigating Environmental and Public Health Risks at the Good Food Conference held in San Francisco this year. If you would like to look up the other panel discussions held at the event, you can find them on the GFC website. If you want to learn more about how India fits into the puzzle of the global alternative protein’s dizzying growth, or are keen to collaborate and build this new protein sector as an entrepreneur, investor, food corporation or scientist, please do visit the Future of Protein website and register to attend. The event is on from Nov 11 to 12 in New Delhi and entry is free! COMPANIES MENTIONED: Beyond Meat is a ten-year-old company that had the biggest IPO in North America in the last two decades this year. Beyond makes meat directly from plants and its revolutionary food-tech products made out of proteins like peas, mung or fava beans, brown rice and sunflower and fas like cocoa butter, and coconut, sunflower or canola oil that replace burgers, sausages, mince or ground meat can be found in 58000 grocery stores in the US. Impossible Foods which was formed in 2011 and was the first plant-based meat to be offered by Michelin restaurants in 2016 and soon made it to the menus of White Castle followed by Burger King last year. Impossible Burgers are made with 96% less land, 87% less water and 89& fewer green house gas emissions than burgers made from cows. FAIRR - Established by the Jeremy Coller Foundation, the FAIRR Initiative is a collaborative investor network that raises awareness of the material ESG (Environmental, Social or Governance) risks and opportunities caused by intensive animal production. FAIRR helps investors to identify and prioritise these factors through cutting-edge research that investors can then integrate into their investment decision-making and active stewardship processes. Centre for Biological Diversity : Based in Tucson, Arizona, is a nonprofit membership, this is an organization with approximately 1.1 million members and online activists, known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism Institute for the Future's Future Food Labs: The Institute for t