Last month saw another successful event for ProVeg, with our team participating in the fourth annual New Harvest Conference, which took place on 19–20 July 2019 at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
New Harvest is a non-profit research institute working towards strategically funding and conducting open, public, and collaborative research into cellular agriculture. Their annual conference brings together leading experts, startups and NGOs to explore the opportunities, challenges and realities of the field.
What is cellular agriculture?
Cellular agriculture is the technology of creating meat, dairy or eggs without animals, and without the negative consequences of animal agriculture, thereby having the potential to revolutionise the food system. The availability of cellular meat will enable consumers to avoid the negative consequences of their food choices, without having to change what they eat.
Supporting an animal-free food system
New Harvest is passionate about reinventing and revolutionising the supply chain of animal-based products. To highlight just one of their projects, in early 2015, New Harvest provided the laboratory of Mark Post, a leading scientist in the field of cellular agriculture and Founder of Mosa Meat, with $50,000 to conduct additional research towards a completely animal-free system for growing cultured meat.
New Harvest is also funding a University Of Bath project, where Scott Allan, a New Harvest Research Fellow, is currently working on the bioprocess design for large-scale cultured meat production.
Building the field of cellular agriculture
The conference was an exciting event for our team, enabling us to create a network that supports the discussion around cellular agriculture. We believe that this technology has high potential to help us reach our mission of reducing the global consumption of animal products by 50% by 2040.
Nathalie Rolland, ProVeg Cellular Agriculture Specialist, presented a talk on our cellular agriculture project and discussed our work with cellular agriculture startups in the ProVeg Incubator. Other topics included engineering innovations, cultured fish, venture capitalist investment, how to communicate cellular agriculture to the public, and careers in the field.
A multiproblem solution
Cultured meat, eggs and dairy complement our plant-based strategy for solving some of the world’s most pressing issues. While a fully plant-based diet is the most effective solution when it comes to environmental impact and health, cultured meat has the huge benefit of requiring less effort from consumers. We are excited about the promising new developments in the field and can’t wait for next year’s meetup!
