The riveting story of the entrepreneurs and renegades fighting to bring the future to our plates


In 2013, an unassuming burger patty made global headlines. It wasn't exceptionally delicious or even grass fed. It caught the world's attention because of how it was made.

Unlike every other burger, this one didn't come from a cow - at least, not directly. Instead, a Dutch laboratory had painstakingly grown the meat from a handful of cow cells in a petri dish, at a cost of $330,000. This burger was the stuff of science fiction brought to life: real meat created without slaughter or environmental devastation.

Now a group of entrepreneurs and scientists are on a mission to bring cell-cultured meat to the masses. Billion Dollar Burger follows their fight to upend the trillion-dollar meat industry, drawing from exclusive and unprecedented access to the main players, from polarising activist-turned-tech-CEO Josh Tetrick to Dutch scientist Mark Post, creator of the 2013 cell-cultured burger. Armed with a mountain of investment capital, they're tugging at the seams of the meat system as we've known it and attempting to carve a more sustainable path into the future. But the entrenched interests, who have everything to lose, are playing dirty. Cell-cultured meat is an existential threat to Big Meat and a potential gold mine for the entrepreneurs who make it happen.

The stakes are monumentally high. Are we ready?

'A deeply reported account of the science, politics, and personalities behind cell-cultured meat that every eater needs to read. Chase Purdy brings the stuff of science fiction to life in this fascinating book' JOHN MACKEY, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market