“Cellular Agriculture” turns 10: A new cycle?

It has been a minute since I shared a more casual, conversational newsletter with the New Harvest community.

It’s easy to de-prioritize when we have so many important dispatches and updates from the team about their on-the-ground progress advancing the science of cellular agriculture!

But today is a special occasion.

On this day in 2015, “cellular agriculture” was named.

There is some lovely storytelling about the naming of the field by our former comms manager, Meera, on our blog, and in a panel discussion she led last year with some of the people who were part of the naming.

To commemorate this day, in the low-key, New Harvest kind of way, I thought I’d share some reflections and insights, both from a recent trip I made out to the Bay Area earlier this month, and through an interview I did two days ago (which reminded me that today was the 10 year anniversary of the naming, whoops…). It’s a long diary-entry kind of email, so rest assured there is a bolded statement and some bullet points at the end.

First: what a trip! In both senses of the words.

The trip was primarily to lend a hand for our safety workshop. My teammate Bre has been NH’s point person in this initiative alongside safety experts Vireo Advisors and I was blown away at how much sophistication and expertise she has grown into after nearly five years of work in this space, sharing conference tables with regulators, policymakers, and safety experts alike. You can check out her takeaways from the workshop here.

We always tack on a few special visits while we’re in the Bay Area. We were surprised that one newer company refused to have us visit in light of our no-NDA policy; often companies will adapt their tours to accommodate our commitment to remaining neutral. That was new!

But we had a couple other companies waive their NDAs without friction – these are of course companies that are not so new anymore, and have found some confidence in what aspects of their work is indeed novel (and probably *could not* be revealed in a simple site visit even if they tried!)

One highlight was being invited to join the EVERY Company for their 10 year anniversary all hands meeting.

The EVERY Company is an important piece of New Harvest’s early lore; we helped co-found the company in 2014 (formerly known as Clara Foods, and formerly formerly known as the New Harvest Egg Project). To be at the team’s all hands meeting while they did a walk down memory lane was such a treat!

What stood out the most at this visit was seeing this mural front and center in EVERY’s workspace:

To see the mission of the company laid bare was almost shocking in the context of recent news.

But shocking in the most refreshing way. I commend Arturo for his bravery in stating his conviction so boldly.

It has been hard not to feel like mission has been eroded in recent years.

It was especially seeing GOOD Meat secure the world’s first regulatory approval for cultured meat in 2020 where my faith in the field started to waver. The regulatory documents revealed that animal products, namely, fetal bovine serum, were still used in the product. Was the mission of cellular just a convenient marketing tactic? Would it be quickly tossed aside once there was money to be made?

That landmark approval, combined with numerous subsequent announcements about “progress” in the field, many of which amounted to empty promises and empty bioreactors, left many of us wondering if cell ag had sold out.

One of the first things our newly hired teammate, Dwayne, did after joining our team was conceive of and assemble our paper, “Cultured meat needs a race to mission, not a race to market,” a call to action (with instructions!) for the field to make a course correction and re-center mission as cellular agriculture’s raison d’être.

Over the past ten years since cellular agriculture was named, we have seen the positioning of cellular agriculture players shift, evolve, and diverge…

Is cellular agriculture an “or” – where displacement of factory farming is critical? Or is it an “and” – a way to make more food for a growing global population? We see this same debate in energy transition conversations – in the face of declining supply and climate impacts, are we reducing our reliance on fossil fuels or are we expanding the diversity our energy offerings?

Similarly, in cellular agriculture, in the face of climate impacts changing the rules of farming, and epidemic viruses challenging food security, are we reducing our reliance on factory farming or are we expanding the diversity of means of producing food?

The answer is both, and with a lot of nuance, depending on what region you’re in and the food culture, economy, and politics of that region. It should be no surprise that we saw that first regulatory approval, with compromises, in Singapore, a nation-state dependent on food imports, keen to achieve food sovereignty. And that we see resistance in states and countries with potent food cultures with politicized connections to animal agriculture. And we see different reactions still in resource-rich, export-driven economies. The reality, also, is that cell ag will emerge unto the world at large, and how these different regions and cultures interact, linked through cell ag innovations and supply chains, is still to be seen.

With the work of our Directors of Responsible Research & Innovation spread across the US, Canada, and EU, we already see quite a lot of regional variance in the messages behind why we should advance cellular agriculture and how. What seems to rise above the differences is that yes, we do need our food system to evolve in a climate changed world; how cellular agriculture fits in alongside so many other excellent solutions is what we must figure out.

Since my trip was to the Bay Area – and my experiences around the time cellular agriculture was named were also quite coastal-American, I will say that in this “first cycle” community in particular, cellular agriculture started firmly as an “or”, pioneered by individuals who are unquestionably driven to end the suffering of animals, who saw companies as an excellent medium to ignite change for animals.

(For what it’s worth, New Harvest believes in an ecosystem-approach for igniting change that balances public and private sectors, of which companies are a part, but the balance and timing and state of the science matters a lot.)

But as this group of companies moved past friends-and-family funding rounds with like-minded ending-factory-farming-focused impact investors, much of the media engagement shifted towards “and” messaging; that we simply need more means of producing food in an uncertain future.

The evolving messaging of course is not as black and white as “and” and “or” makes it seem; but it’s certainly interesting to see messages vary on this spectrum by different players, in different regions, at different times… and also to see how much the varied missions – animals, environment, climate, antibiotic resistance, food security – are spoken about with different weights.

Another thought-provoking highlight of the trip was attending Mission Barns’ celebration of their recent regulatory approvals. Their animal-free salami and meatballs were available in full portions as passed appetizers, walked through the room all night long. I had not been to a sampling event with that much product on display before.

The party was also a walk down memory lane as I crossed paths with so many individuals who have been so instrumental to this field and to my own personal journey with New Harvest. Josh Balk was probably the very, very first person to blindly support me in this work; I actually met him the day I interviewed to be Executive Director of New Harvest over 12 years ago. Paul Shapiro was one of the first people to send me fan mail ever. Then there were the folks I’ve met in the recent past who are only deepening the cellular agriculture story; like Nikhil Prashar who has been sharing his experience in infrastructure financing to companies. There are way too many people for me to name here so I’ll just leave it at that for now…

But again, what was shocking about this event compared to other cellular agriculture tastings and parties I’ve been to before was how front and center the mission of ending animal suffering was. Mission Barns’ CEO, Eitan Fischer, gave a short but powerful speech about how many animals are slaughtered every year, how many pigs are raised in gestation crates, and a couple other gruesome stats to drive home the fact that this is why Mission Barns does what it does. Again, after several years of what felt like individuals burying personal missions for market palatability in this field, it was neat to see.

The overall narrative in cellular agriculture (or even in alternative proteins in general, including plant-based products) has recently been that we’re in a hole. No one cares. There’s no funding. It’s a horrible time for this field.

But I flew out of San Francisco feeling like… maybe the hype cycle is reaching its end.

Perhaps the hype is clearing… and we’re back at the beginning again. A new cycle.

There are a few things making me feel this way:

1. In general, it’s all too convenient to feel kind of ultra-reflective on “birthdays,” so I’ll just acknowledge that off the bat.

2. I met two prospective cellular agriculture founders (completely separately) who just came out and said they’re starting cell ag companies, and this is why, from a mission/this-will-help-the-world perspective. No commentary at all about the state of the field or funding or if it was “hot” or anything. It was the kind of blind ambition that got folks like Arturo and David from Every and Ryan and Perumal from Perfect Day to start their companies with New Harvest ~10 years ago. There was no funding back then either, probably even less than today!!! Feeling this fearless spirit again was invigorating.

3. When we got EVERY started a decade ago, we were *also* in the middle of a worse-than-ever avian flu that threatened food security, farm security, and public health in a completely unprecedented way. Terrible news, but great timing to demonstrate the utility of cellular agriculture.

4. Seeing DSM/Fonterra launch their take on Perfect Day, Vivici, I think can only deepen confidence in the concepts of precision fermentation (and hopefully cellular agriculture more broadly). DSM is a 123 year old company. Their entry into cellular agriculture might distinguish what this next “cycle” looks like compared to the last one. The companies in the space are going to be entering, perhaps with the same ideas that emerged 10 years ago, but with some added special sauce, whether that be decades of expertise, or the security of a multinational companies standing behind the tech from day 1, or perhaps just new approaches to the science!

Also, New Harvest feels like it has entered a new cycle. For those of you who have been on this journey with us, you may recall in 2022 we announced in June that we’d hit $0 by October. The market sucked, no one was donating, and we needed help or it was going to all be over. In a hour long, tear-filled town hall meeting at our conference, we raised enough money to die another day (that’s non-profit dark humor for you) and share plans to shift away from reliance on private philanthropy toward more government support.

Three years later, it’s been working.

We’ve secured multiple grants as partners from the US, EU, and Canada, to collaborative projects of all sizes, from the safety initiative mentioned above to a 12-partner, 9 researcher ecosystem development project in Canada, and a 35-partner, 17-country consortium project in the EU. We’ve also still been working with philanthropists on all kinds of awesome initiatives, like connecting AI with cellular agriculture, and issuing small grants to all kinds of emerging leaders across the field.

It’s hard to not think of New Harvest as a canary in the coal mine for cellular agriculture. When we shared that we were in danger, we were kind of the first in the field to do so. But sure enough, in the years that followed, we saw multiple companies shut down, or enter zombie mode, or pivot hard out of cellular agriculture into biopharma or plant-based. Perhaps our recent successes are a sign of good things to come…

And it’s not just us. While there is a general “down” feeling across the field, there is just so much good news out there too.

The public funding and academic community building the foundations of cellular agriculture are stronger than ever and growing. There are new calls for researcher roles nearly everyday, all across the world. This alone is such a huge bellwether for a new cycle – hopefully one backed by more science, evidence, and rigor, but still rooted in mission and the public good.

This email is meant to be a prompt, not a prophecy. As always, please reach out to me at isha@new-harvest.org with any thoughts and reflections that come up for you!

Stay tuned for part two, where I share the interview I did and some reflections on “field building” as a concept in cellular agriculture and beyond…