In 2020, New Harvest and Vireo Advisors launched the world’s first initiative dedicated to the safety of cultured meat and seafood: the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI).
First, we rallied together 87 individuals from 50 leading cultured meat and seafood companies to share previously unpublished information about their manufacturing process, allowing us to identify potential safety hazards. This led to the field’s first peer-reviewed publication on the safety of cultured meat and seafood products.
Then, in 2022, we gathered 48 governmental scientists and regulators from 15 jurisdictions around the world. This led to a second peer-reviewed publication on governmental priorities for the safety methods, data, and research needed for the regulatory review of cultured meat products to reach commercial markets.
Now, armed with an understanding of what needs to be done from both the industry and regulatory perspective, we are bringing the field together to do it! CMSI Phase 3 aims to coordinate and launch collaborative efforts to develop the methods, data, and knowledge infrastructure to accelerate safety demonstration for the whole field.
To kick off this phase of work, we held a workshop in conjunction with the 2024 Cellular Agriculture Innovation Day at Tufts University. The workshop included participants from academia, government, and industry, all together to discuss safety research priorities, develop research action plans, and initiate collaborations.
The workshop led to vibrant discussions between these different stakeholders – and the start of an action plan for collaborative safety research.
Check out the report here!
We’ve already seen the beginning of collaborations arise from this workshop, and this is just the start! If you are interested in joining the initiative or participating in a future workshop, reach out and let us know!
A special thank you to the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA) for their support in hosting this workshop!
The CMSI team at the safety workshop
