Cellular agriculture
[1] Most of the industry is focused on animal products such as meat, milk, and eggs, produced in cell culture rather than raising and slaughtering farmed livestock which is associated with substantial global problems of detrimental environmental impacts (e.g. of meat production), animal welfare, food security and human health.
[11] Also in 2015, Isha Datar coined the term "cellular agriculture" (often shortened to "cell ag") in a New Harvest Facebook group.
[9] The day after the conference, New Harvest hosted the first closed-door workshop for industry, academic, and government stakeholders in cellular agriculture.
This product supplies cells with nutrients and stimulating growth factors, but is unsustainable and resource-heavy to produce, with large batch-to-batch variation.
Each increase in size will require a re-optimization of various parameters such as unit operations, fluid dynamics, mass transfer, and reaction kinetics.
[24] In 2013, professor Mark Post at Maastricht University pioneered a proof-of-concept for cultured meat by creating the first hamburger patty grown directly from cells.
[33] While most efforts in the space focus on common meats such as pork, beef, and chicken which comprise the bulk of consumption in developed countries,[34] some new companies such as Orbillion Bio have focused on high end or unusual meats including Elk, Lamb, Bison, and the prized Wagyu strain of beef.
[39] In terms of market strength, data published by the non-governmental organization Good Food Institute found that in 2021 cultivated meat companies attracted $140 million in Europe alone.
[42] The chicken nuggets food products are ~70% lab-grown meat, while the remainder is made from mung bean proteins and other ingredients.
[43][44] In 2021, media outlets reported that the world's first synthetic coffee products have been created by two biotechnology companies, still awaiting regulatory approvals for near-term commercialization.
[95] A study found that a "circular bioeconomy" may be "necessary to build a carbon neutral future in line with the climate objectives of the Paris Agreement".
[97] Some are concerned it that may not lead to a ecologization of the economy but to an economization of the biological, "the living" and caution that potentials of non-bio-based techniques to achieve greater sustainability need to be considered.
[103] Cellular agriculture for products such as synthetic coffee could, if the contemporary socioeconomic context (the socioeconomic system's mechanisms such as incentives and resource distribution mechanisms like markets) remains unaltered (e.g. in nature, purposes, scopes, limits and degrees), threaten their employment and livelihoods as well as the respective nation's economy and social stability.
[105] Observers worry that the bioeconomy will become as opaque and free of accountability as the industry it attempts to replace, that is the current food system.
The fear is that its core products will be mass-produced, nutritionally dubious meat sold at the homogeneous fast-food joints of the future.
[106] This can also apply to other areas where patents and private intellectual property licenses are being used, often entirely preventing the use and continued development of knowledge and techniques for many years or decades.
[99] Moreover, radical innovation is considered to be more risky, "and likely involves more information asymmetry, so that private financial markets may imperfectly manage these frictions".
[113] By establishing supporting infrastructure for entrepreneurial ecosystems they can help creating a beneficial environment for innovative bioeconomy startups.
The fellowship program offers funding for Masters and PhD students at Tufts university who are interested in bioengineering tunable structures, mechanics, and biology into 3D tissue systems related to their utility as foods.
[123] The New Food Conference is an industry-oriented event that aims to accelerate and empower innovative alternatives to animal products by bringing together key stakeholders.
