Developing an action plan for collaborative research on culture media food safety: June 2025 working session
Outcomes from a working session with industry, academic, and governmental stakeholders
June 25, 2025, London, UK
Wei Ng, Maria Gomes Fernandes, Kimberly Ong, Ruth Wonfor, Jo Anne Shatkin, Cai Linton
The Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI) aims to address critical issues concerning the safety evaluation of cultured meat and seafood (CM) products through the development of open data and methods. A series of workshops were held in 2024-2025 to identify actionable steps for conducting collaborative and pre-competitive research on CM safety. On June 25, 2025, a workshop dedicated to culture media safety was held at Imperial College London in London, UK. Methods and standards related to culture media were identified as priority focus areas in earlier sessions. The organizing committee included representatives from Aberystwyth University, Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib)/Fostering European Cellular Agriculture for Sustainable Transition Solutions (FEASTS), Hoxton Farms, the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London, Ivy Farms, Qkine, Reading Scientific Services Ltd (RSSL), Vireo Advisors and Multus, with the support of New Harvest. As in previous sessions, this workshop was conducted under Chatham House Rule to promote an open discussion. The workshop was attended by 41 participants, including academic (29%), industry (61%), governmental (7%), and non-profit (2%) stakeholders.
The session began with several presentations related to culture media safety and standards development. Cai Linton (Multus) and Ruth Wonfor (Aberystwyth University) shared results from a project funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) aimed at methods development toward standards for measuring growth factors. Kimberly Ong (Vireo Advisors) presented a collaboration with the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific and Singapore FRESH at National Technical University to develop a Safety-Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) framework. Max Ryadnov (National Physical Laboratory) provided an overview of the standards development process. Jo Anne Shatkin (Vireo Advisors) moderated a panel with Catherine Elton (Qkine), Jon Dempsey (Roslin Technologies), and Martin Carballo Pacheco (Hoxton Farms) on culture media supplier responsibilities. Following presentations, a list of potential research topics was developed based on participant input and prior work on culture media safety. Participants voted on the most urgent and important research topics to focus on during breakout sessions, in which they formulated specific research questions and outlined practical steps for conducting safety research.
This workshop was part of CMSI Phase III: Precompetitive Collaboration on Safety Research & Methods Development.
