Team:Uppsala/Inclusivity
Importance of Inclusivity
Diversity and inclusion are crucial for all sectors of society especially in the field of research and science. Our team itself is diverse with members from eight different countries all over the world. In human practice, we wanted to explore and represent the world beyond the synthetic biology community, for that, we conducted surveys focused on the general public, farmers and interviewed experts from different fields apart from that we engaged with the public through our social media posts.
Surveys
We believed that to invite stakeholder’s input and to gain an overview of societal considerations, surveys are the best option. The anonymity of surveys allows respondents to give their honest opinions and it is easier to gather targeted results from a large population.
Cultivated meat general survey
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. We received 220 responses and more than fifty comments on our project idea and cultivated meat. More information on cultivated meat can be found on the Human Practice Page. Few of the comments as displayed below motivated us to include farmers' voices in our journey for the transition from industrial livestock farming to cellular agriculture.
Farmers would need to be educated towards producing the cultivated meat to allow for a smooth transition and having public's support. Cultivated meat will undoubtedly disrupt conventional livestock farming. Provided we can reduce operating costs and educate farmers, to diversify into more sustainable practises, it presents an exciting opportunity to develop sustainable meat production. Farmers in the traditional business should have a smooth transition into the cultivated meat process.
Farmers Survey
Farmers are the foundation of any society, providing us with a continuous supply of food. Now, with the increasing global population, new technologies and farming methods will be essential to meet the demand for this inevitable situation we are facing. We therefore wanted to reach out to as many farmers worldwide, to get their opinion on future technologies in farming and the changes they have seen during their time in the trade. In addition, the queries and concerns from our public survey on farmers' opinions, we also received guidance on inclusivity of farmers in one of our expert interviews with Irfan Tahir and our discussion with Abi Aspen Glencross. As a result, we collaborated with iGEM Maastricht, their project is about genetically modifying cattle feed to reduce methane emission from cows. Since both of our projects can impact the farmers, we conducted a survey focusing on farmers.
Figure 1. From one of our team meetings with iGEM Maastricht.
Before framing the survey, we contacted Fanny Blom, Project manager at STUNS Life Science, an organization which helps to develop cooperation between universities and society based on research, development and education conducted at Uppsala University and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Fanny Blom helped us to get potential connections from SLU to reach farmers and raised a few questions which guided us in framing questions for the survey. The aim of the survey was to gain their perspective on our projects using a brief description in the survey itself. To reach as many as possible, we translated the survey in seven different languages and sent it to farmers as well as farmers association to gain perspective of both large scale and small scale farmers. Almost all of the questions in the survey had an optional open answer feature for allowing farmers to write their opinions. 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 2. Consent Information in the front page of survey.
Background information of the respondents
Even though we sent out the surveys to many farmers associations and small scale farmers, it was hard to receive responses when compared to our general survey. We received ten replies from three continents with countries including Sweden, the Netherlands, India, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Figure 3. World map showing the location of our survey respondents.
Respondents include 52% of small scale farmers with their main production as crops, poultry, cattle and dairy.
Figure 4. The size distribution of the farms.
Figure 5. The main production of the farms.
Most of the farmers responded positively about their views on sustainable food supply which represents their interest and openness to implement sustainable farming. Furthermore 40% of them are open to adapting new technologies in their farm for efficiency or for more sustainable production in the near future as shown in Figure 7.
Sustainability and the changes
Figure 6. Respondents' view on sustainable food supply.
Figure 7. Possibility of expanding the farm in future.
As a follow up question, we asked themWhat are the ways that their farms can expand in the future. Few of them replied as:
These comments helped us get an overview of their willingness to adapt new technologies for efficiency and sustainability. We inquired whether they have witnessed any major change in the history of their farm. All the respondents mentioned “yes” which reflects that they have seen some changes due to the advent of new technologies and a transition towards more sustainable techniques in the future will not be troublesome or novel. To gain more information about those major changes we asked them to comment on the changes that happened. The comments reflect their increased awareness about biodiversity and sustainability which may help in paving the way for new adaptations and transition from industrial farming to cellular agriculture.
We inquired about whether they are expecting any change in their way of farming in future, for that, 70% of the respondents commented positively. Few people commented on the changes that they are expecting as in Figure 9.
Figure 8. Respondents perspective on possibility of changes in the way of farming.
More efficient and sustainable
Growing products as organically as possible and more sustainable
Less people will support livestock farming of any kind.
Figure 9. Changes that the respondents are expecting in their way of farming.
Following the questions about changes that they are expecting and have experienced, we asked about their personal motivation to adapt new technologies in their farm. Respondents of 56% replied positively and 33% showed hesitation as they were unsure as the stated technologies are not well explained. We also gave them some options to choose to get an overview of the reasons that could motivate them towards applying new technologies in their farms. Many of them chose sustainability and climate policies as displayed in Figure 11 which represents their responsibility towards societal considerations.
Figure 10. Personal motivation on adapting new technologies.
Figure 11. Reasons of why they would choose to adapt to new technologies.
Explaining the project and exploring its’ impact
After these general questions, we gave a brief description of our project below to provide them with an idea of our work:
"Despite awareness of climate change and many people shifting to a plant-based diet, meat consumption has never been higher, the global population is just increasing and resources are becoming scarce. The current production of meat is not sustainable and there is a pressing need to grow meat even more efficiently.One of the solutions could be to produce meat directly from the cells, surpassing the need to raise whole animals for slaughter. The natural process of fat and muscle growth can be replicated under controlled conditions.
Cellular agriculture is the idea to “brew” meat in tanks, similarly to fermentation products such as yogurt and beer. Current methods for the large-scale production of cultivated meat need to be optimized as costs associated with cell culture media are still too high. Our team will attempt to improve the yield by optimizing one of the growth factors, called FGF-2, that can be produced by bacteria."
Following our project description, we inquired about the impact of current meat alternatives like Beyond meat, Impossible meat and Quorn on their livestock farming and trading. We received mixed opinions as displayed in Figure 12. Almost half of the farmers disagreed which reflects that the current meat alternatives have not impacted their trading negatively.
Figure 12. Opinions on whether current meat alternatives are negatively impacting the farmers’ trade.
Following this, we were curious to know whether they will be willing to collaborate with the synthetic biology community to produce cultivated meat. For that, we described the production of cultivated meat with a graphic illustration as below. Only 7% of them responded positively which shows their hesitation towards collaborating in the production of cultivated meat and that is understandable as there is a general skepticism around things which are synthetic or unnatural. However, we believe that with continuous education and spread of information about this subject, their beliefs will gradually change.
Figure 13. Description of cultivated meat production.
In our final question, we wanted to gain their perspective on the market growth for cultivated meat as we received comments on our general survey considering employability of farmers. For that, we mentioned a statement : Based on predictions, it is estimated that cultivated meat has the possibility of making up to 40% of future meat intake and asked their opinion on the statement related to their employability.
Figure 14. Prediction of cultivated meat’s negative impact on farmer employment.
Figure 15. Respondents willingness to collaborate for cultivated meat production.
Farmers opinions on our project
We framed an optional question at the end of the survey, to collect comments on their opinions about our project and received mixed comments which showed both their openness and hesitation towards implementing new technologies.
To conclude, the responses from farmers survey helped us to get a collective opinion of adapting cellular agriculture and cultivated meat from a farmer’s perspective. We would like to thank our respondents for participating in our survey and for commenting on their valuable suggestions. In short, we can see that farmers are willing to move in the path of sustainability and are open to implement technologies which can increase their efficiency and productivity. It is clear that the market growth of cultivated meat and meat alternatives in recent years have very little impact on their trading and employability by looking at their responses.
Farmers’ Friday
Figure 16. Farmers’ friday post on our instagram
We constructed a weekly segment on social media called Farmer’s Friday, where we went through different topics regarding traditional farming and how it could be integrated into the conversation surrounding cellular agriculture. Over the course of seven weeks, we hoped to both highlight the opinions of farmers on the topic and to imagine a world in which the two sectors would overlap in one way or another. We wanted to highlight different ways in which farmers could be affected by changes in their trade in the future. We recognised that one of these changes could become cellular agriculture, so we researched the possible positive and negative effects to share both sides. We also showcased how collaborations between farmers and cellular agriculture companies have the potential to favor both parties. With this, we wanted to imagine how a future might look for cattle farmers and alternative agriculture.
We also went over the controversial debate topic, namely product integrity and if plant based meat should be allowed to be called meat. In 2020, the EU parliament voted for a bill that let vegetarian and vegan products contain meat based terms in their names. We also discussed the importance of distinguishing plant-based meat products from regular meat which can be related to distinguishing cultivated meat from regular meat. Our Instagram page was the ideal platform as our followers could take in the information the most immediately. One of the highlights was when we were able to conduct an interview with a local farmer in Sweden to get his perspective on Cellular Agriculture.
Implementing expert advice for inclusion
We reached out to experts from different fields who guided us through different aspects of our project apart from scientific and technical guidance. Some of them include: ethics, importance of communicating science to the public, patenting, regulations around cultivated meat and inclusivity of farmers. Other than expert interviews, we reached out to Protein Report, a platform dedicated to advancing public understanding of protein-the business, science, and culture of how protein is produced, distributed, and consumed. We shared our project idea with Naropa Love and he helped us for outreach of our project by publishing our events on their social platforms. Protein report platform was one of our potential outreach as their readers include food industry professionals, investors, researchers, policy makers, consumers, and stakeholders with an interest in protein, food, agriculture, and science. More information on our feature in the protein report platform can be found in visibility of our project in the education page. We were able to receive potential guidance from Cellular agriculture companies including Cellular agriculture Australia, New Harvest and Good food Institute.
Promo video multiple languages
We are aware of the importance of language to reach out to people. The spoken words in one’s native language can carry out the significance and send the meaning across differently than when you hear it in your second language or reading subtitles. We want science to be reachable to all and spread the word to everyone about cellular agriculture. Since we wanted to reach out to as many as we could, we used our resources within the team to record the promotional video in four different languages. The iGEM Uppsala team consists of people from many different backgrounds all over the world. Although we would like to have included every language, we hope that by having the promotional video in Hindi, Swedish, German and English we are able to reach out to many and spread awareness about the importance of cellular agriculture.
