Takeaways from Our March 12, 2025 Safety Working Session in San Francisco

With over 40 participants from 14 countries around the world, this session was our largest yet!

This working session series is part of the latest phase of the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI), a collaborative initiative to unite the global cultured meat ecosystem around matters of food safety. Funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Agriculture, these working sessions build off of the priorities for the safety methods, data, and research needed to support safety evaluation of cultured meat products identified in Phase I (industry perspectives) and Phase II (governmental perspectives) of CMSI.

Whereas Phase I and II of CMSI focused on listening to the perspectives of each stakeholder group, Phase III takes this another step: discussing and planning next steps to DO the research needed to address these priorities!

A report of the working session outcomes is coming soon, but I thought I’d share a few overarching takeaways that go beyond the nitty-gritty research plans:

1. The lack of standardization and public information is still holding back the field

This was true when we started this initiative back in 2020, and it is still true today. Without industry standards, regulatory agencies take a case-by-case approach to reviewing safety dossiers, allowing innovators to show safety in any number of ways. While this is status quo at this stage of the industry’s growth, participants highlighted how public safety research and methods development toward standardization would accelerate the whole field.

Because there is so little public information, much of this work must start with the basics of establishing public data on cultured meat processes and products. Through industry-academia collaborations, this knowledge will be the foundation on which methods and standards can be established.

2. There is a willingness to collaborate as a community on safety

Participants came from academic and industry backgrounds to discuss, together, how all players in the cultured meat ecosystem must collaborate on safety. Safety is inherently a pre-competitive and collaborative challenge – any mistakes will hold back the entire ecosystem and any open progress will accelerate the entire ecosystem.

This understanding of the pre-competitive nature of food safety is something we’ve witnessed since the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative began in 2020, when 87 individuals from 50 cultured meat companies came together (without NDAs!) to create the inaugural public process diagram and hazard analysis of the manufacturing process.

3. B2B companies are particularly interested in collaboration

While we saw an interest in this work from all types of industry participants, we’ve seen over and over again that B2B companies are particularly interested in collaborating. This makes sense, because B2B companies can work most efficiently if there are industry standards to tailor their offerings to.

This is good news, because efficient safety research and methods development will require buy-in from industry to provide manufacturing-relevant samples and production environments. However, we’ll likely need participation from both B2B companies and final product developers to effectively do this work.

4. We must think about the specific moment we are in

Themes emerged throughout the conversation that reflect the broader context we’re all working within. The latest wave of avian influenza outbreaks provides a particular incentive for cultured meat work, and a backdrop on which to frame some of the safety work. In particular, One Health, an integrated approach to balancing the health of people, animals, and ecosystems, was a recurring theme that bridges these topics.

However, the uncertainty of the US funding environment loomed large over the discussions as participants brainstormed how to fund this necessary work. Participants had to think creatively about realistic funding sources, which often lie outside their typical fundraising strategies.

A full report on the workshop outcomes is coming soon. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on these big-picture takeaways – what do you think is the future of safety research for cultured meat and seafood?

Join us June 4th for another session in Chicago, IL!  This session will build upon the outcomes of the previous sessions while focusing on the specific priorities shared by participants in the room.

Application is required to attend.

Learn more and apply for a session here!

Thank you to Wildtype for hosting us in their space! It was incredible to discuss the priorities for safety demonstration with a production facility in the background. In addition, thank you to the University of California Davis Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein (iCAMP) for sponsoring the networking mixer afterward! And finally, thank you to our volunteer notetakers, Seth Wood, Joshua Errett, and Bianca Datta, who made such a large workshop possible.

Financial support for this working session series was provided by the US National Science Foundation (Grant No. 2417703) and the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (AFRI project 2024-07959). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.