Viral Videos to Save Cultivated Meat

Overview

From Fauna is a nonprofit creating media to educate people about cultivated meat: real meat made from cells instead of a slaughtered animal – an innovation that could end factory farming and reshape our food systems as we know it.

For most people, the first time they hear about cultivated meat is online, with the content being dominantly negative, portraying the technology as “unnatural,” “gross,” or “repulsive”. Misinformation videos routinely surpass 1 Million Views and tens of thousands of Likes, setting the public framing before most people even see a more neutral or positive presentation. Whoever sets the narrative plays a significant role in determining whether people in the future will support or oppose it. This is not exclusively a future concern as the concept is only decelerated in becoming a real solution to factory farming when no effort is made to inspire future talent, investors, and policymakers, while only negative content exists.

Many donors assume narrative work is heavily funded, but the reality is the opposite: it is among the most neglected levers in the movement. Across the entire cultivated meat ecosystem, over 99% of resources & talent goes to science and policy ($80M), while under 1% goes toward defending against misinformation and telling a positive story.

The last decade has shown, again and again, that whoever shapes the narrative wins the culture war. Cultivated meat has almost no investment in narrative protection, leaving its identity vulnerable long before it reaches commercial scale. A $1M grant over the next two years could dramatically change that, while still amounting to just 1.5% of all philanthropic funding in the sector.

The narrative matters: the global cultivated meat sector is advancing technologically but still faces significant public-perception and regulatory hurdles. Fear and negative framing has had policy consequences: In the past 12 months, cultivated meat has been banned in 7 U.S. states (plus multiple other countries).

With no others in the movement focus on this issue, From Fauna is making the largest impact on changing the narrative.

Since launching our social media in August 2025, our videos have reached 1.75M+ views and 160K+ likes across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. This doesn’t include Rednote, where we’ve translated our content to Mandarin for release in China, an important consumer market that can’t be reached otherwise (50% of farm animals live in China).

This was all done with <10 videos released (content creators often have to post dozens or even hundreds of videos for years to reach numbers like this). All in ~100 days since releasing the first video.

Even with minimal resources, we’re seeing organic engagement from general population audiences (many of whom previously claimed they were skeptical about cultivated meat), and creators with 1M+ Followers are reaching out for collaborations.

Throughout the past three months, we’ve learned that what changes minds isn’t necessarily more data, it’s better storytelling. With the right emotional framing, curiosity replaces fear, and people who once felt hesitant start feeling excited about trying cultivated meat.

We have spent a decade pioneering in the cultivated meat space:

• Published the world’s first textbook on cultivated meat with Oxford University Press — the largest collaboration in the history of cultivated meat, with 100+ authors (top scientists & experts across the field).
• Created the first university courses on cultivated meat at institutions like Stanford.
• Worked with industry leaders such as Mission Barns to produce educational and marketing materials.

This has taught us that the way to solve cultivated meat’s perception problem is by first solving it’s content problem.

We’re channeling our expertise into scalable media — producing emotionally resonant short-form videos that reach more people in a week than traditional education can in a year.

Video is also an unusually cost-effective intervention. The EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) noted in its 2024 review that it often serves as a primary or secondary funder for projects neglected by other donors — a pattern that now fully applies to cultivated meat, where public communication and narrative work have become severely neglected. A single high-performing video can cost under $500 to produce, with the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of viewers — a reach-per-dollar ratio that outpaces most policy or advocacy efforts.

One video can shift perceptions faster than months of policy advocacy or PR. Like this video, where the top comments are positive about cultivated meat, and have over 50K+ likes.

This makes video storytelling an unusually high-leverage tool — and it’s one that’s almost completely neglected within the cultivated meat ecosystem.

Successfully fundraising $75K would allow us to keep this momentum going, hire a full-time animator & editor, expand reach across languages, and make this the world's first viral campaign for cultivated meat instead of against it.

If you care about animal welfare, climate, or science-based progress, we believe this is a great opportunity to help shape how the world feels about cultivated meat!

Why We Exist

The world is increasingly searching for videos about “lab-grown meat,” but the majority of what they find is overwhelmingly negative. Videos portraying cultivated meat as “repulsive” or “dangerous” regularly reach 1M+ views and tens of thousands of likes.

This wave of misinformation has had real consequences: in the past 12 months, cultivated meat has been banned in seven U.S. states and multiple countries, as politicians respond to growing public fear rather than science.

This fear is now shaping policy. Politicians have used negative public perceptions to justify bans on cultivated meat in an increasing number of countries & 7 US states in the last 12 months.

From Fauna was founded to reverse this trend; to make cultivated meat feel exciting and possible! We believe people don’t fear the concept itself; they fear the story being told about it.

Our goal is to tell a better one.

What We’ve Done So Far

We launched our From Fauna social media channels (@LabMeatGuy) in August 2025.

In just a few months, our videos have reached 1.75M+ Views and 160K+ Likes across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Chinese social media.

We’ve seen organic engagement from audiences who previously said they were skeptical or confused about cultivated meat. We are also receiving inbound interest from creators with 1 million+ followers, requesting collaboration.

Our content focuses on human curiosity and visual storytelling — short, emotionally resonant videos that make cultivated meat feel familiar rather than foreign.

Early traction has drawn interest from other content creators and educators seeking collaboration, demonstrating strong momentum even without outreach or a communications budget.

You can see our work here:

YouTube | Instagram |TikTok

Our Track Record

This new video work builds on a decade of impact:

• We published the world’s first textbook on cultivated meat with Oxford University — the largest collaboration in the field’s history, with over 100 authors.
• We created the first university courses on cultivated meat at institutions like Stanford.
• We’ve collaborated with leading companies such as Mission Barns to design educational and marketing materials.

Having worked across academia, industry, and education, we've seen that cultivated meat has a content problem. The right stories simply aren’t being produced at scale.

Our unique niche: we focus on storytelling and human emotion (making cultivated meat feel familiar, delicious, and possible), rather than purely technical persuasion. We believe this is a high-leverage gap.

Because 99.1% of field-wide resources ($80M+) go to science and policy, there is no equivalent investment in shaping the public narrative — despite the fact that misinformation is currently one of the biggest bottlenecks.

Given the size of the farmed‐animal welfare issue( ≈ 83 billion terrestrial farmed animals + ~124 billion fish slaughtered per year), the potential scale of impact from shifting narratives around cultivated meat is enormous.

Video is extraordinarily cost-effective. A single high-performing video can cost under $500 to create yet has the potential to reach millions of people in the best case, and many thousands in a worst case (with the platform we’ve built already). The EA Animal Welfare Fund has repeatedly noted that the field is severely underfunded, and that narrative/public communication is among the least-funded levers in the entire movement. 

Now, we’re channeling that expertise into scalable and cost-effective media to reach more people in a single week than traditional education could in a year.

What Additional Funding Would Enable

We’re seeking $15K for end of year fundraising to build on our early momentum. There is room for additional funding that could very easily be absorbed as well.

On the animal welfare front, the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund flagged that the “room for more funding” across high-impact animal welfare & farmed animal campaigns is US $5.3–7.3 million/year (in addition to what they funded in 2024) and that many interventions remain “severely under-funded.” 

This signals a strong case for investing in public-narrative and outreach work for cultivated meat (a lever that is currently under-resourced).

Here’s how each tier would directly strengthen our impact:

Each of these steps helps transform cultivated meat from an “unknown technology” into a story that belongs to everyone.

Why Media Work Is High-Leverage

Media-narrative work is relatively neglected in this ecosystem. Most cultivated meat or animal-welfare grant dollars go to science, policy, technology. But the “public story” dimension remains under-funded despite being a key bottleneck.

Given our current cost-effectiveness this is a relatively low-cost intervention compared to heavy tech/policy campaigns. Content shifts sentiment faster than slow policy advocacy or reactive PR. 

Our belief in video derives from something extraordinary that we've witnessed: so many people who've dedicated their entire lives to animal protection haven't actually seen factory farms up close — it was powerful content that moved them.

This is why we believe inspiring videos can be an extremely effective tool for change.

Our Limitations and Next Steps

We want to be transparent about uncertainties:

Virality is unpredictable: we cannot guarantee every video will “go viral.” But we mitigate this risk by using proven formats (short-form, emotionally resonant, story-first) and building in redundancy (multiple videos, languages). We’re also building an increasingly large platform; people who have shown by “Following” or “Subscribing” that they want to consistently watch videos on the subject area that we produce.

Algorithm/Platform changes: social-media algorithms may shift. We plan to diversify platforms, repurpose content across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and monitor performance to adjust quickly.

Measurement of impact on attitudes/policy: We will implement tracking (engagement, sentiment analysis, collaboration requests, language reach) and report transparently.

Our next step is simple: scale what’s already working, measure it carefully, and use data to guide the next million views.

Why This Matters Now

Public narratives around cultivated meat are shifting quickly, and not in our favor.

Each month brings more counter-narratives, more politically motivated bans, and more public confusion.

Right now is a rare moment when public understanding is still forming. The idea is new, the categories aren’t fixed, and people are still open to being shown what cultivated meat actually is.

If we don’t fill that space with clear, compelling explanations, others will define it for us.

From Fauna’s early viral videos show that when cultivated meat is framed with clarity and warmth, people respond. But the volume of negative content is growing so action is most relevant now. We must protect cultivated meat’s long-term reputation for it to succeed.