CMSI Phase I: Safety Roadmap for Cultured Meat

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

2020 - 2021

This project was the first phase of the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI), our ongoing joint initiative with Vireo Advisors.

Fifty cultured meat companies shared previously unpublished details about their manufacturing processes.

It was a critical starting point for creating a body of publicly available information about how cultured meat is produced and what safety hazards might be introduced along the way.

We have continued advancing the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative through Phase II and Phase III.

CMSI PHASE I

Overview

To advance cellular agriculture for the public good, it was critical to create public information to guide evidence-based policymaking and regulatory decisions.

The biggest question left unanswered in the public domain was: how is cultured meat made?

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

Without public information, individual, well-capitalized corporations could have too much power to steer regulatory decisions to leave promising technologies behind and threaten corporate capture.

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.

CMSI PHASE I

Outcomes

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

Three 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.

No NDAs were signed throughout the initiative, making this the first example of collective action in cell ag.

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.

Our paper is cited in a United Nations FAO food safety report, and becomes a useful background for the FAO’s ongoing initiative to understand food safety and quality aspects of cell based food and precision fermentation.

CMSI PHASE I

Progress Timeline

CMSI Phase I - Safety Roadmap for Cultured Meat

Jun 2020 - New Harvest and Vireo Advisors formally begin the initiative.

Aug 2020 - New Harvest circulates a project brief to potential funders.

Sept/Oct 2020 - New Harvest and Vireo Advisors host three workshops with industry leaders, getting feedback about and iterating upon the process diagram at the heart of the publication.

Feb 2021 –Data from the workshops is published as a preprint.

Feb 2021 - Vireo Advisors publishes two blog posts about the safety initiative’s backstory and approach.

Mar 2021 - New Harvest successfully raises $4,000 to ensure the publication remains open access when published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Oct 2021 – Our paper is published! The safety preprint is peer-reviewed and published as an open access article in the journal Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety. Crucially, no NDAs were signed in the process of writing the paper.

Mar 2022 – Our paper is cited in a United Nations FAO food safety report.

Apr 2022 – The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases the third and final installment of their sixth assessment report, where they identify cultured meat and cellular agriculture as promising ways to reduce GHG emissions from food production (Ch. 12, page 5). They also single out cultured meat safety as an area where more research is needed (Ch. 12, page 77). New Harvest soft launches CMSI Phase II with a call for funders.

CMSI PHASE I

Collaborators

This initiative was conceived of and carried out in partnership with Dr. Jo Anne Shatkin and Dr. Kimberly Ong of Vireo Advisors, an expert advisory consultancy focused on the safe and sustainable commercialization of new technologies.

We 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.

CMSI PHASE I

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.

This initiative’s forthcoming digital tool to increase practical access and use of the publication was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of 29 members of the New Harvest community, including but not limited to: Karin Conradi, Axel Fehr, Kiran Karra, Kira Kiviat, Nicolas Lacombe, Roman Lauš, Jeremy Piacente, Kelly Tessitore, and Tipping Point Private Foundation.

CMSI PHASE I

Industry Participants

Crucial to this initiative was the participation of 87 individuals across 50 cultured meat companies who 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