Paul Shapiro (author)

Paul Shapiro (born July 3, 1979) is an American animal welfare writer who authored the 2018 book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He's also the CEO and cofounder of The Better Meat Co. and the host of the Business for Good Podcast. He has delivered five TEDx talks relating to sustainable food and animal welfare. Prior to publishing Clean Meat, he was known for being an animal protection advocate, both as the founder of Animal Outlook (formerly Compassion Over Killing) and a Vice President at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
Shapiro is married to Toni Okamoto, author of The Super Easy Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook, Plant-Based on a Budget, Plant-Based on a Budget: Quick and Easy, and The Friendly Vegan. The two reside in Sacramento, Calif. with their adopted pit bull Eddie. He is Jewish and attended Hebrew school as a child. He has cited the Talmud's commandment against tza'ar ba'alei chayim ("suffering of living creatures") and other Jewish principles as influences on his animal welfare advocacy.
Shapiro received a B.A. from George Washington University in 2001, where he majored in peace studies and minored in religion. He taught peace studies at a public high school in Washington, D.C. He was profiled in a 2003 Washington Post Style section article entitled "Animal Pragmatism: Compassion Over Killing Wants to Make the Anti-Meat Message a Little More Palatable".
When he was thirteen years old, Shapiro stopped eating meat as a result of learning about the methods of meat production. About one month later, he stopped eating eggs and dairy.
While a high school student at Georgetown Day School in 1995, Shapiro founded the animal advocacy organization Compassion Over Killing, and served as an undercover investigator and its campaigns director until 2005. Compassion Over Killing became well known for its investigative work exposing conditions for farm animals on factory farms, at livestock auctions, and at slaughter plants.
Shapiro helped spearhead the campaign to end the use of the "Animal Care Certified" logo on egg cartons in the United States. In that case, the egg industry was labeling eggs from hens confined in battery cages as "Animal Care Certified."
From 2005 through 2016, Shapiro led many of HSUS's efforts to protect farm animals, including serving as Vice President of the organization's Farm Animal Protection campaign, including efforts to convince retailers, food service providers, and universities to end their use of eggs from battery-caged birds, pork from gestation-stalled pigs, and to expand their vegan options.
Shapiro co-founded The Better Meat Co. in early 2018 and serves as its CEO. The company's goal is to help meat producers improve sustainability by blending in the start-up's plant-based proteins in their ground meat products.
Shapiro's book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, published by Gallery Books in 2018 is the first book to explore the work of start-ups that are growing animal products without the use of animals. It was named as Washington Post bestseller in the week of January 7, 2018. It was widely reviewed.
A copy of Clean Meat is the first book to be bound in lab-grown leather. The book, bound in “clean” leather grown by biotech start-up Geltor.
In September 2016, female employees at HSUS filed a complaint with HSUS human resources representatives over a pattern of inappropriate sexual behaviour they had witnessed over the preceding six years. A month later Shapiro moved to a different department to "advance HSUS' broader agenda." It was reported that Shapiro left HSUS for unrelated reasons in 2018. In a written statement to POLITICO, Shapiro commented, "I’ve taken responsibility for inappropriate behavior years earlier in my career, and apologized to those who may have been offended".