Today we’re interviewing Chole Sorvino, Forbes reporter and author of the new book, Raw Deal, Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and The Fight for the Future of Meat

This is a book that is a deep dive into the meat industry and its future. This includes food tech such as plant-based and cultivated. Chole’s viewpoint is what I’d view as skeptical but it’s well-researched and the perspective is much needed in this industry.

Colored in this book is the quick 5 decade history of the scale-up of animal agriculture, the externalities in terms of how the meat industry acquires labor and the environmental damages caused by the tons of waste generated daily.

Biggest takeaway? The meat industry we know has quite a brutal history of taking advantage of and proliferating its tactic for world domination. Conventional meat is an innovative technology (which is efficient and huge slaughterhouses that kill, tear apart, and clean animals extremely fast) and has influenced how we eat and we don’t even notice it!

But to be frank, this industry is only 50 years old. It’s actually an amazing case study of scaling a premium product with huge externalities and we can compare this to similar things such as well, smartphones and social media.

Another key section in this interview is our discussion on the current climate in food tech Chloe has access to a lot of information and it was nice to get some perspective on what’s going on.

At the end of the interview, Chloe and I talk about some innovative solutions that she finds promising.

Overall, highly recommend this book. I know a lot of our viewers who listen to My Food Job Rocks are interested in alternative protein but broadening your perspective is really important. I find Chole’s book super informative from a historical viewpoint and her suggestions for creating a better food system are another potential solution for a better world. As someone who’s worked in slaughterhouses, and food tech, and looking into various solutions to solve a lot of these externalities, it was refreshing getting Chloe’s insights.