Team:Uppsala/Human Practices
Introduction
We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat a breast or a wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium Winston Churchill
This year, the iGEM Uppsala team was engaged in a Cellular Agriculture related project, a field that is dedicated to the production of slaughter-free lab-grown meat, grown directly from animal cells, otherwise known as cultivated meat.
What is the problem?
Our planet Earth is currently populated by almost 7.9 billion people with the number rising every second, increasing annually by 1.05% [1]. It is estimated that until 2050 the population will have reached 9.1 billion [2]. Τhis fact does not come without complications, the question of how to feed everyone is being answered with the increase in meat production to 470 million tonnes per year, and the need to diminish world hunger and malnutrition over the world requires an even higher supply of meat [2]. Our current supply food chain and agricultural infrastructures and practices are already compromised in their current state, and in need of more sustainable practices [3][4][5]. They will not be enough to cover our increasing needs [4][5].
Cultivated meat has emerged in an attempt to cover these demands without the need to slaughter animals on a massive scale in order to feed our human population [6] and will allow more arable land to be freed from animal rearing and to be used for growing crops for human consumption instead [6][7]. Therefore, environmentally speaking, cultivated meat production could lead to a decrease in water consumption and carbon footprint compared to conventional meat production [3][6][7].
Furthermore, cultivated meat is considered safe and clean. It does not require the large amounts of antibiotics that are needed in industrial animal farming to prevent infectious diseases in the animals, exacerbating the antibiotic resistance problem we are facing. For cultivated meat, crowded animals in facilities with questionable sanitary conditions will not be necessary [6][7][8]. On that note, animal and human contact will also decrease, potentially preventing the transmission of zoonotic diseases from animals to humans that could lead to future pandemics [7][8]. Cultivated meat might become the answer to many of these problems. For more details, you can see the proposed implementation of our project here and how it relates to the UN sustainable goals here.
However, the production of cultivated meat is still not completely ideal and it is still quite expensive. In the beginning, the production required the use of Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) as a media supplement. FBS is a serum obtained from calf blood, which contains the necessary growth factors for cell culture proliferation in the lab. Thus, the blood collection procedure that is necessary to obtain FBS renders it not completely animal slaughter-free.[9][10]
Commercially engineered growth factors have been, and still are, developed as a substitute for the growth factors found in FBS and are currently available. They are one of the components in so-called serum-free media that substitutes the FBS for the cultivation of the animal cells. The problem is that they are needed in remarkably high quantities due to their lower protein stability, keeping the cost of cultivated meat very high. [9][10][11]
Figure 1. Depiction of contribution of our improved FGF2 growth factor to cultivated meat production, leading to resolvement of contemporary problems and a better life on our planet.
Our goal
To get one step closer to the goal of serum free and affordable cultivated meat media, our team aims to improve one of the growth factors required for the process of cultivating meat in the lab. Basic fibroblast growth factor, or FGF2, is a protein with high mitogenic properties. It plays a key role in tissue formation and repairment.[12][13][14]
Our team decided to have the upscaling of FGF2 as a project topic this year, to achieve massive production of the basic fibroblast growth factor in bioreactors and in long term its use in industry and the reduction in the cost of cultivated meat production. Inspiration in our goals was the 2014 iGEM SF Bay Area DIYbio team [15], who tried to produce milk-proteins in yeast using synthetic biology. The aforementioned proteins would later be used in the production of vegan milk, with vegan cheese creation as an end goal. Besides that, very few other iGEM teams have tried to delve into the alternative protein sector, and to our knowledge no team so far has presented a project related to cultivated meat, which served as a motivation for our team to pursue this track.
To achieve this goal, we pursued several different strategies in our experiments. Our team proceeded with the design and screening of mutations for improving FGF2 using computational tools, site-directed mutagenesis with PCR, and the use of synthetic biology in the generation of optimized mutant FGF2 proteins. In a different approach, a chimeric protein that contains parts from FGF1 and FGF2 (FGFC) was used. This protein was hypothesized to exhibit increased receptor binding affinity, increased stability and thermostability as well as increased solubility for higher yield.
The successful achievement of the above objectives would highly impact the industry of cultivated meat and the associated research field, which would forever change our life. For more details on the functionality of our project you can proceed in the Proposed Implementation section.
Short story of our project
Besides dry and wet lab work, our team strived to engage the public in our project ideas and the world of synthetic biology. During the summer, we were mainly responsible for organizing and hosting an online conference. The “Future Farming” webinar covered different topics within the field of cellular and traditional agriculture. We aimed to spread awareness about the development in the cellular agriculture field, and the shortcomings of traditional agriculture that need to be resolved. You can see more details on the Education & Communication page here.
Along with organizing the webinar, our team also hosted a lot of interviews with experts in different scientific fields, one of them being an ethical expert. His advice along with our participation in the SynthEthics workshop that was part of our collaboration with team Stockholm, aided us to better realize the ethical values of our goal and some ethical concerns that might arise from our project. You can see more details on the Ethics part of Human practice here or Education & Communication here.
Throughout the project, we never failed to engage with the general public through our social media pages and platforms, where we always placed great emphasis on valuing their opinions and feedback. We also distributed a survey on cultivated meat as a means to acquire their thoughts on this idea. At the same time, a different farmer survey was launched which was tailored specifically to this target group. Their opinion was of critical importance to us since we consider farmers one of our biggest stakeholders and they are the people who might unintentionally be negatively affected from future implementations of this idea. For more details, you can see the Cultivated meat survey section on the Human Practice or Inclusivity page.
Ethics
- Environmental - How our project could have good and bad effect on the environment
- Societal - Why is our project needed? How do we combat the increasing demand for meat?
- Ethical - Is it ethically better to consume slaughter-free meat?
- Scepticism - What are the concerns and needs of meat eaters? Why are some skeptical?
- Collaboration - Can we identify others that hope to improve the food system?
- Scientific aspect - What experts could give us an insight into this field?
To explore and understand the ethical boundaries of our project, we sought faculty advice on the topic when it comes to ethical implications to consider. In our expert interview with Stefan Eriksson, Director of the Center for Research Ethics and Bioethics at Uppsala University, we discussed the topic of what ethical meat can be and how people's perception could be similar to the reluctance to GMOs. Although there are no regulations regarding cultivated meat consumption, with the exception of Singapore that recently allowed the consumption of a cultivated meat product [16], it does not seem to be due to health issues occurring from cultivated meat consumption which has neither been verified or refuted due to its novel nature, but because of legislation oversight [17][18]. Before a new product is released into the market it should first be judged as safe by international or domestic organizations such as the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [17][18]. So far the release into the market of two cellular agriculture products (insulin and rennet) has already been approved by FDA [17][18]. However there is a lack of suitable categories under which cultivated meat can be qualified. It is neither a dietary supplement nor a food additive but it also doesn’t meet the criteria for the meat subcategory which according to United States Code (USC) is defined as “the edible part of the muscle of an animal [...] and the portions of bone, skin, sinew, nerve, and blood vessels which normally accompany the muscle tissue and which are not separated from it in the process of dressing” despite meeting the criteria “article used for food or drink for man or other animals [...] ,” that according to Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) place it under the food category [17][18]. If suitable laws for cultivated meat consumption pass, cultivated meat should have a strong ethical argument. We explored a spectrum of topics that varied from considerations of what the benefits are and also where a potentially darker side could emerge.
To be prepared for the ethical considerations and problems that might arise due to our project, we attended a workshop with iGEM team Stockholm that is focused on implementing ethics in synthetic biology. The workshop was in collaboration with SynthEthics and they helped us to identify areas where we could take possible actions related to ethics. We considered what would be the optimal outcome of incorporation of cultivated meat in our society and how we could get there. Read more about the SynthEthics workshop here and the expert interview with Stefan Eriksson here.
The Bright Side
Although our project’s main goal is to optimize the basic growth factor, the long term implementations regarding the production of cultivated meat are connected with animal welfare, indirectly the environment and even our health. Obliquely, our project touches the following ethical considerations:
1. Value of animals’ lives
In June 2020, a cattle herd escaped from a local slaughterhouse in Los Angeles, United States [19]. Two of the animals managed to reach safety and avoided the fate of the rest of the escapees which were recaptured and slaughtered. People cheered for the few animals who miraculously enjoyed an hour of freedom and mourned the ones that were killed [19].
Figure 2. Cow roaming free in inhabited street after escaping from a slaughterhouse.
Animals are also living beings and therefore part of the food chain. We humans in particular, have developed special facilities for animal rearing with animal slaughtering for meat consumption as a final result. There are people who consider the practice of killing animals for consumption as natural, that it is man’s rightful dominion upon non-human beings [20], but there are also people who feel uncomfortable and repulsed in the idea and sight of animal death despite enjoying the taste of meat [21][22], a phenomenon called the meat paradox [23]. There are also people who recognize the morality of abstaining from meat consumption to avoid animal killing, even though they eat meat themselves [20].
There is a lot of controversy regarding the topic of humans being able to live, and have healthier lives, without meat. It mostly is advertised by vegetarian or vegan proponents, but there are also people who underline the nutritional value and the importance of meat in our diet [20]. Regardless of which side is right or wrong, it is an inevitable fact that people enjoy eating meat. But why do animals need to give their lives for this enjoyment? Cultivated meat offers the chance for people to continue enjoying meat, without any harm done to animals. If we truly had the chance to eliminate animal death while still able to eat meat, would that not be the more moral choice?
2. Consideration of animal suffering
Sometimes, in order to provide people with more affordable meat, industrial animal farming facilities resort to practices that either disregard or ensure only the bare minimum of animal welfare, rendering animal maintenance more cost-effective [24]. In the current large scale industrial farming facilities, animals suffer all kinds of violent and painful treatments as they are not considered able to feel pain and suffering in the same way as humans do, even though there is a lack of scientific data to support this argument [24][25].
Chickens bred for meat with poor locomotion because their legs cannot support their excess weight and female sows confined in very small spaces, to increase the number of animals in the place as well as the protection from other aggressive sows [26], with no room for turning during their pregnancies are only some examples of the harm animals face in large scale industrial farming [24]. The suffering is not limited only to physical abuse. Animals are also sentient beings, they can feel pain and pleasure too [25]. As such, the harmful treatment they are subjected into has a negative impact in their psychology that can be observed through repetitive destructive behaviors such as chewing their cell bars [24]. Therefore a question arises if a practice like cultivated meat production could potentially lead to the abolishment of animal abuse.
3. Consideration for the environment
In all this, one should not forget the environmental consequences. Large scale animal farming consequently leads to the release of harmful substances that pollute the terrestrial and aquatic system [3][7][25]. Greenhouse gases are also emitted, sourced either from the factory facilities or the animals themselves as cows are known to release methane emissions in the atmosphere [3][7][25]. It is argued that it would be more ethical to avoid any practises that harm our planet, which is our home.
4. Consideration for our health
Our health is also a matter of importance. Large scale industrial animal farming is also in some proportion responsible for the exacerbation of many contemporary issues. One of them is the increasing antibiotic resistance that risks rendering the current antibiotics ineffective against pathogens. The need for new, effective antibiotics in such facilities is of utmost importance to reduce the spread of diseases among the captive animals [6][7][8][25].
Despite antibiotic usage the spread of diseases between animals still happens, and sometimes those diseases also spread to humans [7][8]. As the current pandemic situation indicates, the danger of zoonotic diseases is always constant and even increased by the growing population of livestock that are enclosed in limited spaces, assisting the spread of pathogens that cause diseases and animal contamination [27]. Furthermore, industrial farm animals that are selected and bred for a specific trait, after some generations they constitute a genetically very similar population that lacks genetic heterogeneity. This means that not only is it less likely for animals that can resist new pathogens to exist in industrial farming livestock but also that new pathogen mutations that can also affect humans are more likely to happen [27][28]. Moreover, the harmful conditions of the farm industry do not contribute to a robust immune system in animals. On the contrary, the suffering that animals are subjected to in industrial animal facilities contributes to weakening of their immune system, rendering them vulnerable to becoming pathogen hosts [27].
COVID-19 is not the only pandemic disease that has arisen indirectly due to human exposure to sick animals or meat consumption. There are other previous pandemics throughout history that have arisen because of the above reasons. The swine and avian flu, diseases responsible for pandemics, may have come from one of the outbreaks in industrial farming facilities, and rapidly spread worldwide causing global health problems [29][30]. One should not forget Bovine spongiform encephalopathy that has arisen from cows, commonly known as mad cow disease. Although the last one is responsible only for regional small-scale outbreaks, it is a bright example of the health hazards that meat consumption might lead to [27].
Would it not be more ethical to transition into a meat production habit that would also protect us from such harms?
The Dark Side
There are also some more malicious aspects of cultivated meat production that could come forward because of our project. There are some major ethical concerns that arise from the establishment of lab grown meat production that consequently bring forward ethical dilemmas.
1. Will it negatively impact small scale farmers?
One of the risks of our project is the unintentional repercussions for small scale farmers. For the production of cultivated meat, animal cells need to be donated [3][7] and those can come from animal farms. The main adversary of animal life quality is the industrial factories with unsavory conditions. Small scale farmers with more favorable conditions for animals are considered potential allies and needed for cell donations. However our project’s ideals might be perceived wrongly and it is our responsibility not to let all farmers’ reputations be indiscriminately harmed.
2. Will extinct animals become part of our diet in the future?
Nowadays, since more and more companies and scientists are engaged in the lab-grown production of different kinds of meats such as pork, chicken and fish, the idea of producing unusual kinds of meat might also start circulating. The animal sources for these unusual tastes might be species that are already rendered extinct [6][31]. Genetic material of extinct animals has been found and preserved and with the use of cloning techniques and the donation of stem cells from still existing relative to the extinct species, we could potentially grow cultivated extinct animal meat in bioreactors [32]. There is a certain appeal of tasting meat that has never before been eaten by contemporary humans. With the use of genetic modifications, the possibility to eat mammoth meat or other extinct species could be a possibility [31]. It is already speculated that these kinds of meat are delicious as overhunting was the main reason for the extinction of some of the animals [33]. There are those who advocate that cultivated meat production can pave the way for extinct animals to be brought back to life again; it has already contributed in attempts to create of genetic material reservoirs of current farm animals as well as endangered animal species in case de-extinction is rendered possible in the future [34][35]. It is believed that it is our obligation to revive animal species that became extinct due to human intervention [32]. However there are concerns regarding the consequences of de-extinction as the effects that it may cause to the ecosystems or to other endangered species living in them are unknown [32]. Therefore this point is put more in the morally gray zone.
3. Frankenstein meat
Despite the numerous arguments in favor of the benefits of cultivated meat related to health, no scientific evidence exists yet that proves the safety of cultivated meat. Since it is a new product still not released in the market, more research information is required. This lack of information concerns a lot of people about potential unknown negative effects or hidden side effects that the consumption of cultivated meat might have on our health [36]. A large percentage of the population is concerned that cultivated meat might be dangerous since they think of it as “unnatural” because it is man-made compared to the “real” conventional meat [37]. There is an ideology that everything natural is inherently good and everything unnatural carries risks, including cultivated meat in the unnatural category [37]. There is even a comment that compares cultivated meat production to the creation of the Frankenstein creature from Mary Shelley’s book [36]. Although the concern arguments are baseless since there is no concrete evidence, the fact remains that we cannot completely guarantee the safety of an untested product.
4. Ethical cannibalism
Many people have expressed their concerns about cellular agriculture leading to the lab production of another more unique taste of meat, that of human flesh [38]. According to cellular agriculture, animals only have to donate their cells for us to enjoy a meat product. Therefore who is to say that in a few years cultivated human meat won’t be the new trend in meat delicacies? Consequently the following dilemma arises: Is it morally wrong to eat human meat? On one hand, the idea of devouring meat from the same species usually leads to feelings of disgust and uneasiness, dividing people due to mistrust. After all, how can you trust someone if you believe that they might want to eat you? On the other hand, although it is considered taboo there are still people in our society, usually not completely mentally healthy, that resort to killing other people for consumption [39]. By providing cultivated human flesh for them some murders might be prevented and no one would get harmed for that reason. Some lives could potentially be saved. And wouldn’t that be morally better compared to killing humans for their flesh?
Cultivated meat survey
Although cellular agriculture is still a relatively new field, major accomplishments have already been made in it. Among the accomplishments is the production of the first lab grown burger patty by Mark Post in 2013, which was produced from cultured cells [31][40]. Subsequently, the release and commercialization approval of a cultured chicken product was achieved in Singapore in 2020 [41]. In industry, cellular agriculture has majorly developed in a short time. In the last few years, a lot of companies and non-profit organizations have arisen all over the world that are dedicated to the production of other cultured meat products such as cultivated pork and chicken meat, cultivated fish and even leather [42]. However, despite cultivated meat being a reality for a couple of years now, people are either unfamiliar with it or reluctant to try it, as they find it unpleasant. In order to raise awareness of the development of cultivated meat and to assess people’s willingness to accept cultivated meat in their everyday life, our team created and distributed an online survey to the general public. Below you can see some of the comments left by people who took the survey as well as our survey questions.
Public Survey Results
Considering ethical and responsible research, we provided our participants with consent information at the beginning of the survey as displayed below and anonymized their responses.
Figure 3. Consent Information in the front page of survey.
The age of respondents ranged from 18 to 70 years old with 45% being within the age group of 18 to 24, which is expected, as we sent out the survey to other iGEM teams. Following that, we got responses from all over the world with 58% female respondents. Below are a few graphical representation of the results:
Figure 4. Age groups of the respondents
Figure 5. Educational background of the respondents
Following the geographical questions, we wanted to understand the meat consumption patterns and the factors that they would prioritize for food shopping.
Figure 6. Meat consumption pattern of respondents.
Figure 7. Respondents’ considerations on food shopping.
We briefly explained the process of producing cultivated meat using the graphics below:
Figure 8. Respondents’ knowledge on cultivated meat.
Figure 9. Process of cultivated meat production.
To introduce our project and its impact to our survey respondents, we included the following information:
Facts about cultivated meat:
Scientists are working on a new method of producing meat by using animal cells instead of living animals. Cells are grown in a tank to form and produce muscle tissue, which is the main component of the traditional meat we know today. Harvesting meat in such a way is called "cultivated meat". This will likely be widely available within the next decade. Note that it is real animal meat and should not be confused with current plant-based meat substitutes on the market.
- Overuse of antibiotics in meat production
- The risk of zoonotic diseases
- The cruelty of slaughtering animals
- Severe environmental impacts of current industrial agriculture system
Several products that we know today have been enabled with the help of biotechnology through various organisms in culture tanks, this includes many fermentation products like cheese, yogurt, beer, wine and bread. Cultivated meat would be yet another innovative food product on the market added to the list.
We inquired about their expectations from cultivated meat and the reasons that would motivate and hinder them to try cultivated meat. We also received their opinions on cultivated meat impacting traditional livestock farming.
Figure 10. Respondents willingness to try cultivated meat.
Figure 11. Reasons why they would not want to try cultivated meat.
Figure 12. Reasons that would motivate the respondents to try cultivated meat.
Figure 13. Respondents' expectations for cultivated meat.
Figure 14. Perceived impact of cultivated meat on farming.
Apart from these, we asked people to fill in their opinions towards cultivated meat such as their thoughts,concerns and mixed feelings. As a result, we got few interesting comments as below:
People's response and thoughts about cellular agriculture
Concerns about cellular agriculture imposing on agriculture and farmers:
Similar to our concerns about traditional farming practices and farmers' employability ,our respondents also raised queries as below. These comments further influenced us to get to know more about farmers' opinions on this field:
You asked and we answered:
Similar to a coin having two sides, everything in this world has pros and cons. With that in mind, we received a few queries in the survey and we would like to take this opportunity to try our best to answer them:
To continue reading about our Integrated Human Practices work, click here.
References
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Our Story
Our pre-project work:
FGFuture started when students from 11 different programs, all around the world at different stages of their education joined together with the aim of creating a positive impact on this planet.
Before officially starting , we discussed facts and aspects of synthetic biology which motivated us to join this year’s iGEM competition. Because we come from different academic backgrounds, we had different motivations on why we wanted to be a part of the team but everyone’s ultimate goal was to learn something new and exciting. We started by discussing what could be the potential impact of synthetic biology in the future. Then we went through the details about iGEM in-depth and were astonished by earlier projects which eventually made us pitch project ideas of our own.
Figure 1: A visual description of the brainstorming sessions for project idea generation.
Initially, we submitted each idea and ended up with a pool of twenty five diverse ideas. We then pitched the ideas to each other and selected five of them. Following that, we divided ourselves into five groups to discuss the theory behind implementing those five ideas and made a final decision on choosing FGFuture as our project. We tried to implement the human practice component in every stage of our project, including the selection process. To illustrate that, we thoroughly went through the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to analyze the feasibility of each project. We voted for project ideas considering the sustainable goals and how they may impact the world. Although there were many great ideas, we wanted to explore the cellular agriculture field which drove us to choose a project related to improvement of cultivated meat production.
Understanding the problem:
After selecting our project, we explored how cellular agriculture is beneficial and can help the food industry. Talking about food, we cannot forget the famous quote by M.F.K Fisher “First we eat and then we do everything else” .Who doesn’t love food? Every single one of us has to eat every day to survive, as food is a vital ingredient for a happy and healthy life. During one of the discussions, a question arose, “Is our current food chain sustainable? Let’s talk about reality”. With that, we walked through the disadvantages of the current livestock farming: including zoonotic diseases, antibiotic resistance, animal welfare, greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use.This aspect was shocking and motivated us to think about the long-term consequences that could emerge if we continue to neglect these problems. One concern was that we cannot feed the human population with the current available resources and actions have to be taken regarding the aforementioned disadvantages. That eventually led us to the path of “sustainability without sacrifice” using cellular agriculture.
Exploring current cultivated meat production:
Meat substitutes are not novel products. Mosa meat, Memphis meat and other cellular agriculture companies have already paved the way [1]. That made us question why cultivated meat is not commercially available yet. What are the bottlenecks that are limiting progress? We searched for an answer in published articles and concluded the three important factors that need to be considered and solved: Cost, Scale-up, and regulation [2]. The next step was to pick one limiting factor and try to solve it. Firstly, we found ourselves concerned with the cost;we wanted to make cultivated meat affordable for the average consumer. Diving deeper, we found out that it was the growth factors used to replace Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) in growth media that kept the cost high [3]. We studied the different growth factors used for the cultivated meat production: EGF, IGF1, VEGF, FGF2, FN, KGF, TGF-beta and Serum Albumin. Out of all, we decided to improve and optimize the Fibroblast Growth Factors (FGFs) because it is one of the most expensive components of serum free media and also has a simpler structure to work with. Apart from the lab work, we wanted to integrate human practice at every step of our project by considering things outside of the lab. This gravitated us to have an expert interview with Professor Carl Heldin Henrik who is the mastermind behind the research projects on growth factors at Uppsala university.
Carl Henrik walked us through the optimization techniques for growth factors which was very insightful for our project. In addition to the techniques, Carl-Henrik Heldin mentioned the ethical issues regarding cultivated meat production which encouraged us to contact Stefan Eriksson, director of the Center for Research Ethics and Bioethics. Eriksson supported our project by mentioning that “if the need arises people will consider changing their food habits”.
How synthetic biology can help to feed the world?
After discussing the optimization techniques, we decided to proceed with three different approaches in the wet lab. But first, we wanted answers for queries related to cell culture, to make sure that the project was feasible.Therefore we approached Elin Sjöberg, a researcher with experience in cell culture, to get her perception of our project. The interviews so far led us to believe in synthetic biology and its potential to reduce world hunger.
Implementation:
Being an interdisciplinary team has many advantages. It enabled us to think about in silico approaches before starting any experiments in the wet lab. The modelling team communicated with the researcher Henning Henschel to get an idea about softwares that can be useful for our computational techniques. In addition, we were fortunate enough to get in touch with professor Hugo Gutierrez de Teran from the department of cell and molecular biology. He helped us with software called ‘Q’ to view the effects of different mutations on structural stability before implementing any wet-lab experiments. Aside from modelling, we received guidance and useful advice from Professor Anthony Foster throughout our project who assisted us to kick start our wet lab work.
Cultivated meat production chain:
Apart from the lab, we wanted to go through the cultivated meat production supply chain to learn about different stages of the process. As a consequence, we realized the importance of the general public, as they are the ultimate consumers of many products. That realization influenced us to know more about people’s perception of our project and cultivated meat in general. After all, we wanted to know whether our project will be a success in the market. Thus, through our human practice subteam we framed a survey that we first distributed to our team. To our surprise, we received different opinions from such a small group of people which prompted us to come up with the ‘Cultivated meat survey’. Even though there are few available surveys around this subject we wanted to compare and contrast those with ours. After the first responses we received, we realized that there is a need to spread awareness on cellular agriculture.That’s where the idea of Cell Ag monday stemmed from, to showcase the concept behind cellular agriculture in our social media platform as an educational content.
Who can be impacted by our project?
The survey then motivated us to examine the impact that our project may have in the near future which made us inquire experts from the cellular agriculture field. Irfan Tahir, a researcher at New Harvest, gave us advice about who can be affected both positively and negatively by large scale production of cultivated meat. He talked mainly about farmers’ inclusivity as they are the backbone of our society.For this reason, we created a specialized survey for farmers along with iGEM Maastricht to learn their valuable opinions on our projects.Inclusivity of farmer’s perspective in our project was inspired by few factors which firstly includes our expert interview with Stefan Eriksson as he mentioned that it could be debated how farmers would be affected.Also,our general public survey results showed that people were concerned about profession of farmers.Ultimately, we were inspired by interview with Abi Aspen Glencross back in 2016, in which she shared her strong thoughts on inclusivity of farmers in the conversation of integrating cellular agriculture into the future farming.It will be a combination of multiple factors that will allow us to reach a more sustainable future and we believe farmers should be a part of the conversation.Other than the survey, we created Farmers’ Friday posts on social media,Through these efforts to connect with farmers, we aimed to find out how solutions developed by both sides could contribute to the transition from current agricultural methods that can benefit both farmers and the cultivated meat industry.
Cultivated meat is a sensitive topic:
We reached out to companies for sponsorships which made us recognize that cultivated meat is a sensitive topic.For that, we brainstormed as a team to present our project effectively to sponsors as well as to the public and that’s when Drivhuset made its appearance. They helped us on how to communicate our project through a workshop organized by us in collaboration with iGEM Stockholm.Their guidance helped us to confidently pitch our project to companies like Pan biotech and CellulaREvolution who were interested in our mutated FGF2.
Is FGFuture a revolution in cultivated meat?:
Besides wet lab work, we conducted brainstorming sessions every week. In one of these sessions we started debating a few questions which directed us to patenting issues. Some of those questions were: “What if our project is really successful? If so, do we want to patent our mutation? Is that possible?”. The human practice team approached Kerstin Ekelöf from Uppsala University Innovation office, a facility where students and researchers can get support for patenting and commercialization of their ideas. She helped us understand and resolve our uncertainty around patents in research.
Upscaling our project:
While approaching the end of our lab experiments, we talked about the plans and ideas to upgrade our project to the next level. While talking about upgrades, we started dreaming about the upscaling of FGFuture. Few of our team members had a virtual tour of Testa Center, a pilot scale biological production unit in their program. With the help of our coordinator Magareta Krabbe we got an opportunity to discuss our upscaling idea with Adam Wegelius, Jesper Hedberg, Jens Hammarlund, Charlotte Brink and over at Testa Center and our supervisor from Uppsala University Chandra Sekhar Mandava. We were excited and happy to make our vision happen by conducting actual upscaling experiments in testa. This resulted in the team’s exploration of another bottleneck of cultivated meat which is upscaling of production.
FGFuture in the market:
Our dreams about FGFuture does not stop there, we wondered and wanted to be certain that our project will reach the community. At the same time we came across a blog post about regulations on cultivated meat which influenced us to consider another problem in cultivated meat production, the regulations. Therefore, we received advice from an indian law firm, Ikigai law, who then connected us with Good food institute, India. In addition to that, we organized the Future farming webinar with an ideal lineup of speakers to spread awareness about the interesting cellular agriculture field.
Our love and dream for FGFuture continues!
Expert interviews
(To see more about our interviewed experts, click on their portrait above)
References
[1] Cor Van der Weele, Peter Feindt, Atze Jan van der Goot, Barbaravan Mierlo, Martinus Van Boekel. Meat alternatives: an integrative comparison. Trends in Food Science & Technology. Volume88, June 2019, Science Direct
[2] Gusto, How can pharma help cultivated meat "unlock the biggest bottleneck" in the industry? August 2021, Gusto
[3] How is cultivated meat made?, THE PROCESS || What Is Cultivated Meat?
[4] Ikigai Law, April 2020, Overview - Regulatory Issues Surrounding Cultivated Meat, Ikigai Law
