CMSI Phase I: Safety Roadmap for Cultured Meat

Gathering insights from the cultured meat industry around matters of safety.

To advance cellular agriculture, it is critical to create public information to guide evidence-based policymaking and regulatory decisions. At CMSI’s conception, there was a major unanswered question in the public domain: how is cultured meat made?

Only after we could describe the manufacturing process could we assess safety and risk.

Phase I focused on gathering insights from as many participants as possible from the nascent cultured meat industry to create peer-reviewed, public information that represented the field as a whole.

The result was an inclusive, collaboratively created publication outlining the manufacturing process of cultured meat - the first time that this critical information was brought out of the private sector and into the public domain.

Outcomes

87 people from 50 cultured meat companies participated in this initiative, representing over 60% of the global cultured meat industry at the time.

1:1 engagements and workshops culminated in a peer-reviewed paper in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety that charts a path forward for how we can demonstrate the safety of cultured meat.

Fig 1. Key steps in the cultured meat and seafood development and manufacturing process.

This key figure from the paper was the first published diagram of the manufacturing process of cultured meat, co-created alongside 50 competing cultured meat and seafood companies.

Collaborators

New Harvest and Vireo Advisors worked with Allen Gunn of Aspiration Tech, a leader in innovative gatherings for nonprofits, to design the three workshops.

New Harvest research fellows Vanessa Haley-Benjamin, Alexis Garrett, Samuel Peabody IV, Natalie Rubio, Andrew Stout, and John Yuen provided technical expertise as facilitators.

The publication was authored by Kimberly J. Ong, Jeremiah Johnston, Isha Datar, Vincent Sewalt, Dwayne Holmes, and Jo Anne Shatkin.

Funders

This initiative was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition, Tipping Point Private Foundation, Erin Culley and Richard Carlson, and the Center of Complex Interventions.

The publication with our findings will remain fully open access thanks to the generous contributions of Wendy Alcorn.

Industry Participants

Phase I: 87 individuals across 50 cultured meat companies provided insights into their manufacturing processes.

Ronit Bakimer and Didier Toubia; Aleph Farms

Joshua March; Artemys Foods

Mariia Abyzova and Askar Latyshev; ArtMeat

Carrie Chan and Mario Chin; Avant Meats

Shannon Falconer; Because Animals

Oded Shoseyov and Tzvi Zvirin; BioBetter

Katie Kam; BioBQ

Iñigo Charola; Biotech Foods

Lou Cooperhouse, Lauran Madden and Noreen Hobayan, BlueNalu

Sebastian Rakers; Bluu Biosciences

Christophe Chantre, Grant Michael Gonzalez, and Luke MacQueen; Boston Meats

Stefano Biressi, Luciano Conti, Giulia Fioravanti and Stefano Lattanzi, Bruno Cell

Josh Pollack and Valentin Fulga; Cell Ag Tech

Sofia Giampoli; Cell Farm Food Tech

Viknish Krishnan-Kuttyl; Cellivate Technologies

Marianne Ellis and Illtud Dunsford; Cellular Agriculture Ltd.

Leo Groenewegen; CellulaREvolution Ltd.

Ian Johnson and John Pattison; Cultured Decadence

Steven Rees and Jose Morachis; Defined Bioscience, Inc.

Brandon Chen and Shannon Cosentino-Roush; Finless Foods

Niya Gupta; Fork & Goode

Jalene Anderson-Baron and Matt Anderson-Baron; Future Fields

Nicolas Morin-Forest; Gourmey

Nick Beaumont; Heuros

Benjamina Bollag and Ruth Helen Faram; Higher Steaks

Yuki Hanyu; IntegriCulture

Vitor Santo; JUST

Tiziano Barberi and Dave Schnettler; Lab Farm Foods

Eric Jenkusky and Jed Johnson; Matrix Meats

Romana Vanova-Hrncirik; Meatable

Lavanya Anandan, Luke Grocholl, and Dario Kolenko; Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

Fedon Moog; Mirai Foods

Dwayne Holmes; Mosa Meat

Cai Linton and Reka Tron; Multus Media

Shubhankar Takle; Myoworks

Nicholas Legendre, Alex Rajangam, and Brian Spears; New Age Meats

Nieves Martinez Marshall and Michelle Lu; Novel Farms

Masataka Minami; NUProtein

Patricia Bubner; Orbillion Bio

Nina Buffi, Witold Maniowski, Jordi Morales-Dalmau, and Jan Saam; OSPIN Modular Bioprocessing

David Brandes and Paul Mozdziak; Peace of Meat

Ka Yi Ling and Durga Sathiakumar; Shiok Meats

Karolis Rosickas and Steve Oh; SingCell

Beth Loberant; SuperMeat

France-Emmanuelle Adil and Clément Carlier; Tiamat Sciences

David Kay, Eric Schulze, Meri Firpo, and Deepti Kulkarni; Upside Foods

George Peppou; Vow

Charles Cuerrier; Whiteboard Foods

Aryé Elfenbein; Wildtype

Two industry representatives from an undisclosed cultured meat company