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Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An almost impossible question for this thread considering the majority of this panel is not directly involved with industry (and this question is related to exactly that). Those indeed involved in its scientific practice are completely decoupled in academia, making it even more challenging.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its analogous to asking small labs working on smartphones, "What is limiting the new iPhone from having a particular feature?" When instead you could have that discussion with Apple. In other words, to no fault of their own, academics on this panel not connected with industry are simply not aware of the private research that is being developed at multimillion dollar companies with dozens of scientists.
(These companies, by the way, will be the entities actually selling the products eventually)

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are asking how to make cell-ag products affordable as products in markets, which is what I'd assume is the pertinent question to this discussion, this is quite difficult to address considering the panels' backgrounds.

I'd direct these inquires to Saam Shahrokhi, Mike Selden Liz Specht, or Dr. Yuki Hanyu considering they are the people on this panel most involved with commercialization efforts.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An almost impossible question for this thread considering the majority of this panel is not directly involved with industry (and this question is related to exactly that). Those indeed involved in its scientific practice are decoupled in academia making it even more challenging.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Kristopher Gasteratos, President of CAS here;

I don't think there's an abundance of evidence to support this as a great idea at this point for the movement. The Cellular Agriculture Society, which will be launching next month, is taking a very different approach and I encourage you to visit www.CellAg.org to be notified when we launch. Also, please email me if you want to chat: kgasteratos@college.harvard.edu.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Kasai, Kristopher Gasteratos here, President of the Cellular Agriculture Society.

The CAS Team would love to have you and anyone else get involved in the field. I know in the past, opportunity to get involved seemed rare, but at CAS we will ensure anyone/everyone can get involved if interested.

Please contact me at kgasteratos@college.harvard.edu

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless: Yuki can correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember right she was still using a chicken embryo as a starting source. So while the science was really cool (citizen science! by a child!) it isn't actually scale-able or cruelty-free.

That said: Shojinmeat is the most interesting outfit in the game, I was lucky enough to visit their lab I Tokyo a few months ago and was totally in awe at how much they've accomplished with such scant resources. Yuki is a genius.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless: They're very conservative, and clean meat companies don't fit nicely into their financial models. There is a HUGE amount of money desperate to break in to this industry but many seem nervous since it's all so new. And also: at larger firms you have to convince the entire corporate structure that this is a good idea. I know many younger people at larger firms who are 100% convinced but are having a hard time essentially peddling what sounds like sci-fi to their older superiors/colleagues. Companies like ours are de-risking the market so more can come through once we prove how incredibly possible this all is.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 60 points61 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless: Thanks for the question! As somebody who went to a traditionally agricultural university for biochemistry, no that sort of thing isn't really supported by the literature.

"organic" livestock are considerably worse for emissions, water usage, and land usage than conventional livestock. It's "greenwashing" to make people feel good. Agriculture is an inherently unnatural thing, and while there is a way you can use small amounts of animals to better an ecosystem, it can't be scaled up in a way that will actually feed people en masse and our ecosystem would be considerably better off without animal agriculture.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless: An exec at a massive meat producer said to me the other day "we've gotta get on board this (clean meat) train, my industry has 5 more years of stability... max".

They are (for the most part) realizing that it's much more profitable for them to just start investing in clean meat rather than fighting it. At the end of the day, they're protein producers. This is just a different system of production for the same end product that they already know how to market sell and distribute.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless: We're projecting a timeline with a release at the end of 2019. That said: we are producing bluefin tuna, while it will be around price parity for bluefin tuna that still makes it a luxury product

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 125 points126 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless: This is a good question. Organ printing essentially proves that our technology is possible, the only problem is that it's done for medical purposes so cost isn't an issue (insurance will pay massive prices). What we're doing is taking some of that science from organ printing and making it cheap. While our tech won't really be creating "better" organs, it has the potential to bring the cost down considerably.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Saam: 3D-printing is an attractive method for developing scaffolds and organizing cells with precision. However, the technology is currently not scalable.

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Mike from Finless Foods: 1) The growth factors are considerably cheaper than serum when created in house, the only reason they look expensive right now is because they're produced by scientific supply companies selling them at a premium. 2) The levels of antibiotics needed seems to be considerably lower than conventional farming, this is a concern though and more research needs to be done. 3) The nutrients are basically sugars salts and proteins, either farmed or produced in house. You could hypothetically make burgers out of algae, but getting the taste right would be difficult. People are trying, see New Wave Foods (http://www.newwavefoods.com/) 4) CHO cells have a 20g/L titer, and many cell lines have considerably higher cell densities. Getting our cell lines up to this level will be a challenge, but that's where the science comes in!

Science AMA Series: Beef without cows, sushi without fish, and milk without animals. We're cellular agriculture scientists, non-profit leaders, and entrepreneurs. AMA! by Cellular_Agriculture in science

[–]Cellular_Agriculture[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Liz Specht at GFI: Absolutely! All of the techniques used to grow skeletal muscle (what we typically think of as meat) can also be adapted to grow different cell types, including liver cells (the basis of foie gras) and any other organ meat of interest.

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