Cellular agriculture in the UK: a review

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.

[1]  Alexandra E. Sexton,et al.  Making Sense of Making Meat: Key Moments in the First 20 Years of Tissue Engineering Muscle to Make Food , 2019, Front. Sustain. Food Syst..

[2]  B. Urbano,et al.  Consumers’ willingness to purchase three alternatives to meat proteins in the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and the Dominican Republic , 2019 .

[3]  Marianne J. Ellis,et al.  Bioprocess Design Considerations for Cultured Meat Production With a Focus on the Expansion Bioreactor , 2019, Front. Sustain. Food Syst..

[4]  J. Barnett,et al.  What's in a name? Consumer perceptions of in vitro meat under different names , 2019, Appetite.

[5]  H. Vandenburgh,et al.  Challenges in the quest for ‘clean meat’ , 2019, Nature Biotechnology.

[6]  C. Bryant,et al.  A Survey of Consumer Perceptions of Plant-Based and Clean Meat in the USA, India, and China , 2019, Front. Sustain. Food Syst..

[7]  A. Froggatt,et al.  Meat Analogues: Considerations for the EU , 2019 .

[8]  Alexandra E. Sexton,et al.  Framing the future of food: The contested promises of alternative proteins , 2019, Environment and planning. E, Nature and space.

[9]  John Miller.  The Literary Invention of In Vitro Meat: Ontology, Nostalgia and Debt in Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants , 2019, Literature and Meat Since 1900.

[10]  R. Pierrehumbert,et al.  Climate Impacts of Cultured Meat and Beef Cattle , 2019, Front. Sustain. Food Syst..

[11]  Marianne J. Ellis,et al.  Next generation in vitro liver model design: Combining a permeable polystyrene membrane with a transdifferentiated cell line , 2018, Journal of membrane science.

[12]  J. Barnett,et al.  Consumer acceptance of cultured meat: A systematic review. , 2018, Meat science.

[13]  Marianne J. Ellis,et al.  Bringing cultured meat to market: Technical, socio-political, and regulatory challenges in cellular agriculture , 2018, Trends in food science & technology.

[14]  Alexandra E. Sexton.  Eating for the post-Anthropocene: Alternative proteins and the biopolitics of edibility , 2018, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

[15]  Elizabeth A. Specht,et al.  Opportunities for applying biomedical production and manufacturing methods to the development of the clean meat industry , 2018 .

[16]  Josh Milburn.  Death-Free Dairy? The Ethics of Clean Milk , 2018 .

[17]  M. McManus,et al.  Microbial lipids: Progress in life cycle assessment (LCA) and future outlook of heterotrophic algae and yeast-derived oils , 2018 .

[18]  E. King,et al.  Blood, meat, and upscaling tissue engineering: Promises, anticipated markets, and performativity in the biomedical and agri-food sectors , 2018, BioSocieties.

[19]  Carolyn S. Mattick,et al.  Cellular agriculture: The coming revolution in food production , 2018 .

[20]  Martina Miotto,et al.  Developing a Continuous Bioprocessing Approach to Stromal Cell Manufacture. , 2017, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[21]  R. Pedersen,et al.  Inducible and Deterministic Forward Programming of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells into Neurons, Skeletal Myocytes, and Oligodendrocytes , 2017, Stem cell reports.

[22]  M. Sohaib,et al.  Tissue engineering approaches to develop cultured meat from cells: A mini review , 2017 .

[23]  K. O’Riordan,et al.  The first bite: Imaginaries, promotional publics and the laboratory grown burger , 2016, Public understanding of science.

[24]  Josh Milburn.  Chewing Over In Vitro Meat: Animal Ethics, Cannibalism and Social Progress , 2016 .

[25]  Alexandra E. Sexton.  Alternative Proteins and the (Non)Stuff of “Meat” , 2016 .

[26]  N. Stephens,et al.  Promise and Ontological Ambiguity in the In vitro Meat Imagescape: From Laboratory Myotubes to the Cultured Burger , 2016, Science as culture.

[27]  Marianne J. Ellis,et al.  Hollow Fiber Bioreactors for In Vivo-like Mammalian Tissue Culture , 2016, Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE.

[28]  C. Chuck,et al.  Toward a microbial palm oil substitute: oleaginous yeasts cultured on lignocellulose , 2016 .

[29]  C. Gough,et al.  Consumer responses to a future UK food system , 2016 .

[30]  Beate Seibt,et al.  Analogies, metaphors, and wondering about the future: Lay sense-making around synthetic meat , 2015, Public understanding of science.

[31]  Sunil Kumar,et al.  In vitro meat production: Challenges and benefits over conventional meat production , 2015 .

[32]  A steak in the future , 2015 .

[33]  L. Petetin.  Frankenburgers, Risks and Approval , 2014, European Journal of Risk Regulation.

[34]  M. Post.  Cultured beef: medical technology to produce food. , 2014, Journal of the science of food and agriculture.

[35]  J. Savulescu,et al.  The Ethics of Producing In Vitro Meat , 2014, Journal of applied philosophy.

[36]  N. Stephens.  Growing Meat in Laboratories: The Promise, Ontology, and Ethical Boundary-Work of Using Muscle Cells to Make Food , 2013 .

[37]  H. Tuomisto,et al.  Environmental impacts of cultured meat production. , 2011, Environmental science & technology.

[38]  S. M. Chuva de Sousa Lopes,et al.  Differentiation of porcine inner cell mass cells into proliferating neural cells. , 2010, Stem cells and development.

[39]  N. Stephens.  In vitro meat: Zombies on the menu? , 2010 .

[40]  J. van den Dolder,et al.  Isolation and characterization of porcine adult muscle‐derived progenitor cells , 2008, Journal of cellular biochemistry.

[41]  M. Ellis,et al.  Expansion of human bone marrow stromal cells on poly-(DL-lactide-co-glycolide) (PDL LGA) hollow fibres designed for use in skeletal tissue engineering. , 2007, Biomaterials.

[42]  M A Benjaminson,et al.  In vitro edible muscle protein production system (MPPS): stage 1, fish. , 2002, Acta astronautica.

[43]  Oron Catts,et al.  Growing Semi-Living Sculptures: The Tissue Culture & Art Project , 2002, Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology.

[44]  E. Thornton.  Fifty Years Hence , 1975, Journal of pastoral care.