BIO BUSINESSEAT JUST, INC.tion continues, and can refresh media and
remove waste constantly, Miotto says—a
strategy that saves resources while boost-
ing productivity. The company also coats
its microcarriers with a peptide molecule
from which cells can detach when they’ve
matured, which saves space and also seems
to help cells grow in serum-free media. The
team has trialed the bioreactor at a small
scale, Miotto says, and is currently devel-
oping larger prototypes to test. “There are
challenges from beginning to end,” she tells
The Scientist, so it’s important to carefully
consider which aspects of traditional cell
culture will work at commercial scale “to
make cultured meat something viable.”Regulatory and consumer
approval
Whatever way the field gets to the larger
volumes they’re aiming for, Bomkamp
says, “we’re really at sort of what feels like
an inflection point” in the cultivated meat
industry. One of the most exciting devel-
opments, she explains, is the approval in
Singapore of cultured chicken made by
Eat Just, which creates and distributes
plant-based eggs in the US. The com-
pany launched the chicken at the pri-vate members club 1880 in Singapore but
recently discontinued the arrangement and
switched instead to supplying the Canton-
ese restaurant Madame Fan and home
delivery service foodpanda. Vítor Espírito
Santo, director of cellular agriculture at Eat
Just, says that about 700 customers have
tried the meat since its approval in 2020,
but that the demand is much greater. “Our
main focus is being able to produce suffi-
cient amounts to feed the markets in Singa-
pore,” he says. “We wish we were producing
more than where we are now.”
He adds, though, that the green light
in Singapore provides “a clear path”
toward approval from other regulatory
agencies, including the United States
Food and Drug Administration. The reg-
ulatory process will vary from country to
country depending on existing regulation.
For instance, according to a summary
from the Good Food Institute, in Japan,
cultivated meat already complies with
current rules, so the government is focus-
ing on integrating those regulations with
guidelines to foster consumer acceptance.
Researchers in the UK and US, mean-
while, are working under the assumption
that approval will require being transpar-ent with regulators about how products
were made, and thus are keeping care-
ful track of “every single compound that
these cells have ever interacted with any
point in the life cycle,” says Faram.
Public perception could also play a role
in the success of these products, notes Chris-
topher Bryant, a social scientist who consults
for alternative protein companies. “There’s
a variety of views towards cultured meat,”
he says, “ranging from people who are very
excited about it and techno optimists who
like to be innovators and the first amongst
their friends to try new products and new
technologies, right through to the people
at the other end who maybe have a world-
view whereby natural things are good and
deviations from nature are somehow bad in
themselves.” Bryant and his colleagues have
shown that in focus groups, it’s common for
people hearing about cultivated meat for the
first time to be unsettled by the idea, but that
this changes with more exposure to the idea.
“Throughout the course of the conversation,
basically, they have more time with the con-
cept and learn about the benefits and are a
bit more familiar with it, and by the end tend
to be a bit more on the fence than then they
were at the start.”
He recommends that cultivated meat
companies highlight in their communi-
cations the full range of benefits, from
what he calls the more obvious—needing
to kill fewer animals—to the less obvi-
ous, such as avoidance of antibiotics dur-
ing production and lowered risk of com-
mon foodborne diseases. “Those things
are probably more important to consum-
ers, but not quite so obvious.”
One thing that is clear is that the indus-
try alone isn’t going to be able to fulfill
worldwide food needs any time soon. “We
need more food in general, so we’re not
necessarily trying to take away from fisher-
ies, aquaculture, or farmers,” says Duscher.
“We just want to add something additional
that’s just as healthy, safe, effective, tasty, to
feed this growing population in a hopefully
sustainable manner.” gFOOD TECH: A worker in the US constructs a
bioreactor to be used for cultivating chicken
meat in the US and in Singapore.70 THE SCIENTIST | the-scientist.com