Cell-based meat industry and expertise

What is meant by the term?

“Cell-based meat” refers to meat that is grown directly from cells instead of meat that is harvested from an animal body.

What do companies that engage in this do, i.e. who are they and what are they replacing?

There are a broad array of companies in the cell-based meat space. Commercially successful cell-based meat operations will require many readily available cell lines for the different consumed species of mammals, birds and fish. Cost-effective cell culture media is also needed as are bioreactor designs that are capable of proliferating vast quantities of starter cells. Large-scale scaffolding systems are also needed to seed, differentiate and then structure the cells into the variety of meat and seafood cuts that are currently consumed. As such cell-based meat companies focus on cell-line creation, media development, bioreactor design and other ancillary services like specialized computer software development.

Fully structured cell-based equivalents of meat and seafood offerings like chicken breasts and salmon fillets are the “holy grail” and under development, but in the short term numerous companies are developing “hybrid products” that combine animal cells with plant-sourced material. New companies are constantly popping up but household names include Upside Foods, Good Meat, BlueNalu, Mosa Meat, Meatable, Finless Foods, Shiok Meat and Wild Type.   

What education and experience would you recommend to a client who was looking to hire a cell based meats expert?

Cell-based meat development is a multidisciplinary pursuit requiring experts with backgrounds in regenerative medicine, stem cell science, muscle biology, tissue bioengineering, bioprocessing, computational modeling, environmental economics, food science and nutrition and large-scale process engineering. Experts in this space ideally combine rigorous academic training (PhD level) in one or more of the aforementioned disciplines with industry experience in cell culture or biomass production.

How could such an expert theoretically help companies?

Experts can help companies in a number of different ways from understanding the landscape, early stage species selection processes, technical roadmap development, pursuing necessary funding, scaling up bioprocesses and tackling regulatory approval.