The New Harvest Fellowship Program
A series of catalytic grant-making efforts to emerging technical leaders to build the academic foundations of cellular agriculture.
2015 - Ongoing
Through our catalytic grant-making programs, New Harvest planted the seeds for cellular agriculture as a field.
Prior to 2015, “cellular agriculture” did not exist as a term, and it fell in a funding gap: it required expertise from medicine for applications within agriculture.
Our thesis was simple: If New Harvest takes the leap and funds cellular agriculture research, then we can have a community of researchers with data and expertise to win big time government grants.
There were dozens of researchers around the world keen to do this work; however they did not have access to
New Harvest alumni have co-founded companies, won government grants, and mentored dozens of students. They comprise the cellular agriculture vanguard.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Overview
The Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI) is a joint initiative between New Harvest and Vireo Advisors aiming to address critical technical, methodological, and informational challenges related to evaluating the safety of cultured meat (CM) products.
CMSI involves the convening of diverse stakeholders, including industry, governmental scientists, regulators, academic researchers, and others.
Gaining such varied perspectives advances public knowledge and the practice of food safety for CM products by identifying and addressing data gaps.
Research conducted to develop data and methods build the necessary support elements for the emerging ecosystem, which can raise regulatory and consumer confidence, support industry efforts toward commercialization, and improve the efficacy of evaluation processes of regulatory safety reviews.
We are currently in Phase III of this initiative.
The New Harvest Fellowship Program
Gathering insights from the cultured meat industry around matters of safety.
2015 - Ongoing
Applications closed; research underway
The New Harvest Seed Grant Program
Gathering insights from the cultured meat industry around matters of safety.
2015 - Ongoing
Applications closed; research underway
The New Harvest Dissertation Award
Gathering insights from the cultured meat industry around matters of safety.
2015 - Ongoing
Applications closed; research underway
The Cellular Agriculture Science Engine
Gathering insights from the cultured meat industry around matters of safety.
2023 - 2025
The New Harvest-Culley Carlson Award
Gathering insights from the cultured meat industry around matters of safety.
2025 - Ongoing
Applications closed; research underway
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Outcomes
87 people from 50 cultured meat companies participated in this initiative, representing over 60% of the global cultured meat industry.
48 governmental scientists and regulators from 15 jurisdictions around the world identified governmental priorities for the safety methods, data, and research needed for regulatory review of cultured meat products to reach commercial markets.
A series of working sessions are being held throughout 2024 - 2025 on Developing an Action Plan for Cultured Meat Safety Research.
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.
Twenty interviews, two virtual workshops, and one in-person workshop culminated in a peer reviewed publication in Foods that identifies the key safety questions and priority areas of research going forward.
From these discussions, collaborative safety research projects are being launched to demonstrate the safety of cultured meat and seafood products.
No NDAs were signed throughout the initiative, making this the first example of collective action in cell ag.
In addition to research priorities, participants repeatedly expressed the need for more information in the public domain to be able to evaluate any new hazards, and the need for more multi-stakeholder work going forward.
We are currently in Phase III of CMSI.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Collaborative Safety Research Projects
The following research projects were launched as part of the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative.
Methods Development for Measuring Growth Factors
Oct 2023 - Ongoing
Growth factors are a key input in cultured meat production due to their roles in controlling cell proliferation and differentiation. Currently, the lack of standardized methods for measuring growth factors slows safety demonstration and regulatory review. A collaboration between Vireo Advisors, Multus, Aberytswyth University in Wales, Extracellular, and the British Standards Institute, this project aims to develop and validate analytical methods for reliably measuring growth factors that can be used to estimate exposure levels when consumed in cultured meat and seafood products.
Safety-Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) List
May 2024 - Ongoing
A collaborative project between Vireo Advisors, Good Food Institute APAC, and Singapore FRESH at National Technical University, this project aims to develop a Safety Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) List of commonly used media ingredients for cultured meat and seafood. The list includes nutrients that animals and fish produce and consume, such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and growth factors, and a safety assessment independent of regulatory considerations intended to be harmonized across regions as a first-level screening to reduce the level of effort for companies and regulatory reviewers. The SAMI list also aims to help companies screen products for residue levels of these ingredients in media formulations without having to undergo a new assessment and approval process.
Creating a Protein Thermostability Dataset to Accelerate Cultured Meat and Seafood Development
Jan 2025 - Ongoing
New Harvest, Vireo Advisors, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and Defined Bioscience are collaborating to create an open-source, curated dataset that incorporates direct measurements of growth factor thermostability. We are aggregating protein thermostability data from the public domain and generating in vitro and in silico data on growth factor thermostability. Data will be processed for compatibility with AI/ML workflows and released in an open-source format, facilitating field-wide data-sharing and providing a foundation for developing AI/ML models for growth factor thermostability to understand the safety of their use in the production of cultured meat. Funding for this work is provided by Food Systems Innovation.
This project is also part of New Harvest’s AI in Cell Ag Initiative.
CULTURED MEAT SAFETY INITIATIVE (CMSI)
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 II - International Regulatory & Government Perspectives
Oct 2022 – With the support of the Singapore Food Agency, an in-person workshop was held at the Singapore Food Safety Research Center, co-hosted by New Harvest and Vireo Advisors.
Nov 2022 – Two virtual workshops were held with governmental scientists and regulators, co-hosted by New Harvest and Vireo Advisors.
Apr 2023 – Findings are published as a preprint while in the peer-review process.
Jul 2023 – The peer-reviewed publication is published as an open access article in the journal Foods.
Oct 2023 - New project launches out of CMSI: Methods Development for Measuring Growth Factors. A collaboration between Vireo Advisors, Multus, Aberytswyth University in Wales, Extracellular, and the British Standards Institute, this project aims to develop and validate analytical methods for reliably measuring growth factors that can be used to estimate exposure levels when consumed in cultured meat and seafood products.
CMSI Phase III - Precompetitive Collaboration on Safety Research & Methods Development
Oct 2024 – New Harvest and Vireo Advisors kick off Phase III with a cultured meat safety working session series, with financial support from the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. 2417703) and the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (AFRI project 2024-07959). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.
Jan 2024 – First working session in Boston, MA, co-sponsored and hosted by the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA). Notes from this working session can be found here.
May 2024 - New project launches out of CMSI: Safety Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) List, a collaboration among Vireo Advisors, Good Food Institute APAC, and Singapore FRESH at National Technical University
Dec 2024 – Second working session in Austin, TX, co-sponsored by and co-located with the Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting.
Jan 2025 - New project launches out of CMSI: Creating a Protein Thermostability Dataset to Accelerate Cultured Meat and Seafood Development. New Harvest, Vireo Advisors, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and Defined Bioscience are collaborating to create an open-source, curated dataset that incorporates direct measurements of growth factor thermostability. Funding for this work is provided by Food Systems Innovation.
Mar 2025 – Third working session in San Francisco, CA, with in-kind support from Wildtype and the University of California Davis Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein (iCAMP).
Jun 2025 – Fourth working session in Chicago, IL: with in-kind support from Perkins Coie
Contact
If you have questions or would like to get in touch regarding CMSI, please contact Bre Duffy at breanna@new-harvest.org