[4] In the course of his research, he toured a poultry farm outside Delhi where he saw "tens of thousands of chickens in a metal warehouse, doped with drugs, living in their own manure and being bred for production traits that caused them to be immune-compromised.

[citation needed] When Matheny returned to the States, he read about a NASA-funded project that "grew" goldfish meat to explore food possibilities for astronauts on long-range space missions.

[4][7] He contacted several of the cited authors[4] and teamed up with three—a tissue engineer, cell biologist and animal scientist—to consider the viability of producing cultured meat on a large scale.

[8] However, when Canadian molecular and cell biology student Isha Datar published a paper about the possibilities of cultured meat and sent it to him for feedback, Matheny hired her, and in 2012 appointed her as executive director of New Harvest.

A number of New Harvest Fellows have been involved in the establishment of new cellular agriculture startups,[citation needed] such as Daan Luining and Mark Kotter who co-founded Meatable.

[13] Originally called Experience Cellular Agriculture[8]: 63  and attended by primarily company founders, its audience has grown to include researchers, students, and investors as well.

[15] Isha Datar, Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya (two New Harvest volunteers) founded Muufri in 2014 to produce an animal-free cow's milk via biotechnology.