New Harvest has come a long way since starting out twelve years ago as the organization which brought cultured meat from a seemingly far off sci fi concept to real, news making science that regular people can get excited about. It's no easy feat to set out to achieve a goal as far-reaching as ours, but the progress that we are making is significant - and it gets more exciting as the momentum continues to build. 

Vince Sewalt, Senior Director of Product Stewardship & Regulatory at DuPont guest blogs with his thoughts on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's report on Future Products of Biotechnology, and its shortcomings with respect to cellular agriculture.

Illtud Dunsford comes from a centuries long line of farmers in Wales, and is an award-winning producer of artisanal meats as founder of Charcutier Ltd. He is also a Nuffield scholar. The Nuffield Farming Scholarship program was established by William Morris, the grandson of a farmer. After working as a bicycle repairman in Oxford, England, Morris began making newer bicycle models, and eventually started a motor car business. Realizing in the then-early stages of the car industry that he should seek best practices, Morris travelled to Detroit to learn how reliable, lower cost cars were being produced in America. His model, the Morris Cowley, was able to compete with Henry Ford thanks to mass production principles learned in the United States. Morris became a leading industrialist and philanthropist, and was honored with the title Lord Nuffield.The Nuffield Foundation was established in 1943, and by 1947 its scope of objectives had widened to include agricultural advancement. The purpose of the Nuffield Farm Scholarship program is for scholars to “search out and bring back to farmers in the UK details of good and innovative agricultural husbandry, from different parts of the globe.”Illtud’s studies led him to the discovery of cellular agriculture, at the 1st International Symposium on Cultured Meat at Maastricht University in 2015. Illtud’s final report documenting his world travels with the Nuffield program includes a chapter on cultured meat, and New Harvest community member David Leibowitz has provided a synopsis of this chapter below.

Making cellular agriculture a reality is no small feat! It is a team effort, carried out by New Harvest's network of scientific pioneers from various backgrounds working together on the challenges of culturing meat piece by piece. For many of the scientists in our community, dedicating their careers to the advancement of cellular agriculture was a dream that could only have been made possible via a grant from New Harvest. Since New Harvest is funded completely by donors, we are essentially crowdfunding a new field of science on a global scale.Our small but growing team of Research Fellows are on the front lines of this work, paving the way for even more future cellular agriculturists to produce meat, milk, eggs, leather, and other animal products without animals. Read on to find out in their own words what being a part of the New Harvest community has meant to them.