By Jessica Scott-Reid
Jessica is a Canadian writer, animal advocate and plant-based food expert. Her work appears regularly in media across Canada and the US.
More Canadian researchers are jumping into the race to bring cell-based—otherwise known as cultivated—meat to market. It’s real meat grown directly from animal cells in a bioreactor. As announced last month, Ontario Genomics will be supporting a multidisciplinary team, headed by McMaster University’s tissue-engineering expert, Ravi Selvaganapathy, with a $10 million dollar investment into the research and development of cultivated meat.
One of the main goals is producing cultivated meat that achieves taste, texture and price parity with traditionally farmed meat. That parity says, Ontario Genomics President and CEO Dr. Bettina Hamelin, is critical and the only way to achieve widespread consumer acceptance and adoption. “This is the reason we invested in this particular project,” she says, “because the impetus here is to scale this up.”
“There is a global movement in research and innovation to bring about more sustainable ways to feed the growing population, and cellular agriculture and cultivated meat is a key component of that.”
Dr. Bettina Hamelin, President & CEO Ontario Genomics
Generally, the development of cultivated meat has seen a slow but steady rise in other regions, mainly Singapore and the US, where cultivated chicken is already being served in a handful of restaurants. “But right now the price of cultivated meat is high,” says Hamelin, “so there is a global collaboration and competition happening to ensure that we can accelerate that scaling up.”
According to a statement from McMaster University, this particular project “aims to develop a homegrown manufacturing process by exploring ways to reduce the cost of each step in the production process, with the goal of making cultured meat production economically viable.”
The rush to produce cultivated meat to scale is being fueled partly by the climate crisis which makes the ability to produce meat more sustainably a matter of urgency. Current food systems that rely heavily on traditional animal farming are major contributors to climate change. Animal agriculture has been estimated to emit anywhere from 15-25% of global greenhouse gases, and is a leading cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, air and water pollution, ocean degradation and profligate land use. Cellular agriculture, or the production of meat without the need to farm and slaughter animals, instead relies on technology to grow the very same products with far less impact on the planet.
“I believe that alternative solutions like this will help alleviate some of the stress in the food supply chain.”
Prof. Ravi Selvaganapathy, McMaster University
“There is no more land in the world to grow crops to feed animals,” explains Selvaganapathy. “Yet, our demand for meat is continuously increasing. I believe that alternative solutions like this will help alleviate some of the stress in the food supply chain. Through lower land use it will have a significant impact on climate change as pressures to deforestation can be reduced.”
Selvaganapathy says he was interested in the cellular agriculture space “right from the time I saw the first ground meat type burger made from this technology.” At that time he was working on “using additive manufacturing methods to form tissue-like structures for biomedical application and thought that it would be a good method to adapt to cultivated meat. Then upon further investigation, I found that there were significant ecological consequences of growing meat and this technology has the potential to mitigate some of these impacts.”
Cultivated meat production facility at Upside Foods in California. Photo: Upside Foods
Further, Selvaganapathy explains that the “tunability” of cultivated meat “will lead to innovation. For instance, we can produce meat tissue with tunable fat composition (much like milk in supermarkets),” he says, “which will open up opportunities for customization that were not possible before. These innovative approaches will change the way that we look at meat.”
Selvaganapathy equates the new food technology “similar to how [the] solar industry was in 2000s where we know that for climate change mitigation, we needed to make it widespread but costs were higher. Investment in technology development led to price parity in a decade or more without any big fundamental technological breakthrough but rather optimization and improvement in each of the constituent parts of the value chain.”
Cultivated chicken from US company Good Meat that has been introduced to diners at select restaurants in Singapore and the US. Photo: Good Meat
Of course, the meaty $10 million dollar question is when can Canadians expect to see cultivated meat available for sale to consumers? “We have a four-year timeline to develop prototype technologies,” Selvaganapathy explains. “It is up to our industry partners to take this technology up and start production.”
“Hopefully soon,” laughs Hamelin, in response to the question. “There are some hurdles we need to overcome,” including further investment, and just like in other jurisdictions, gaining regulation (and educating regulators). With USDA approval of two cultivated chicken products in the US already completed, Hamelin is confident. “Any regulator approval is helpful [and] will help accelerate approvals in Canada.” Hamelin’s hope, she says, “is that within the next 10 years we will see Canadian cultivated meats on the market,” or even sooner in restaurants.
Ultimately say Hamelin, “There is a global movement in research and innovation to bring about more sustainable ways to feed the growing population, and cellular agriculture and cultivated meat is a key component of that.”