Abstract
This review details the core activity in cellular agriculture conducted in the UK at the end of 2019, based upon a literature review by, and community contacts of the authors. Cellular agriculture is an emergent field in which agricultural products—most typically animal-derived agricultural products—are produced through processes operating at the cellular level, as opposed to (typically farm-based) processes operating at the whole organism level. Figurehead example technologies include meat, leather and milk products manufactured from a cellular level. Cellular agriculture can be divided into two forms: ‘tissue-based cellular agriculture’ and ‘fermentation-based cellular agriculture’. Products under development in this category are typically valued for their environmental, ethical, and sometimes health and safety advantages over the animal-derived versions. There are university laboratories actively pursuing research on meat products through cellular agriculture at the universities of Bath, Newcastle, Aberystwyth, and Aston University in Birmingham. A cellular agriculture approach to producing leather is being pursued at the University of Manchester, and work seeking to produce a palm oil substitute is being conducted at the University of Bath. The UK cellular agriculture companies working in the meat space are Higher Steaks, Cellular Agriculture Ltd, CellulaRevolution, Multus Media and Biomimetic Solutions. UK private investors include CPT Capital, Agronomics Ltd, Atomico, Backed VCs, and Breakoff Capital. The UK also has a strong portfolio of social science research into diverse aspects of cellular agriculture, with at least ten separate projects being pursued over the previous decade. Three analyses of the environmental impact of potential cellular agriculture systems have been conducted in the UK. The first dedicated third-sector group in this sector in the UK is Cultivate (who produced this report) followed by Cellular Agriculture UK. International groups New Harvest and the Good Food Institute also have a UK presence.
Highlights
What is cellular agriculture? Cellular agriculture is an emergent field in which agricultural products—most typically animal-derived agricultural products— are produced through processes operating at the cellular level, as opposed to processes operating at the whole-organism level
Potential future products bracketed under the label cellular agriculture include meat produced though tissue engineering (variously known as cultured meat, clean meat, cell-based meat and cultivated meat), and animal-derived products such as milk, leather and egg white produced through recombinant DNA fermentation techniques (Datar et al, 2016; Stephens et al, 2018)
In this review we suggest the common-use definition of cellular agriculture could be expanded to include the cellular production of agricultural goods that are not sourced from animals, here reflecting upon the example of fermentationbased palm oil production
Summary
What is cellular agriculture? Cellular agriculture is an emergent field in which agricultural products—most typically animal-derived agricultural products— are produced through processes operating at the cellular level, as opposed to (typically farm-based) processes operating at the whole-organism level. This review details the cellular agriculture landscape in the UK at the time of publishing, providing an overview of key actors in the sector from a range of backgrounds, including university and corporate laboratory research, private investors, social science, Life Cycle Analyses, and policy work. Potential future products bracketed under the label cellular agriculture include meat produced though tissue engineering (variously known as cultured meat, clean meat, cell-based meat and cultivated meat (referred to as CM)), and animal-derived products such as milk, leather and egg white produced through recombinant DNA fermentation techniques (Datar et al, 2016; Stephens et al, 2018).
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