Latest / Art of the Question / The Future of Meat - Prof. Hanna Tuomisto - #24

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The Future of Meat - Prof. Hanna Tuomisto - #24 · Art of the Question

• Julius Moorman: I'm really interested in the concept of lab-grown meat. It's one of those things that I first heard about it maybe five years ago or something. And then every now and then I hear something about it, like in the news perhaps. But I was just really curious to know where we're at, where the technology stands and when we eventually can expect it in the supermarket. First of all, I was curious to hear from you. When did you first get interested in lab grown meat? ⁓ Yeah, that's actually a long time ago because it was already in 2008. The first time when I heard about in that time, it was called in vitro meat. So that was when New Harvest, which is ⁓ ⁓ non-profit organization. ⁓ It was looking for somebody to do environmental assessment of, prefer to call it cultivated meat. ⁓ So, yes, and I was in that time doing my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford about environmental impacts of ⁓ agriculture. and I was on some sort of email list for ⁓ lifecycle assessment experts, so those who do these kind of environmental assessments. then I just found this ⁓ advertisement from New Harvest that they are looking for an expert to carry out this environmental assessment. And I got very interested. I was very ⁓ interested in all of these environmental issues of food systems and dietary chains. Then I thought that, wow, this is something really exciting because it's something completely different than what we have taught before that, okay, we improve the agriculture practices or change the diets towards plant-based diets. then here the solution was that, okay, it sounds like that people can continue eating still meat, but we just produce meat in a different way, which could be more sustainable. ⁓ so, yeah, so I got excited about this and then I sent a bid to New Harvest that I would like to do this study and then they hired me to do it. Well, that's a good introduction. Before we get into what lab grown meat or cultivated meat and tills, let's first talk about the regular meat industry. Because apart from the fact that we obviously have to kill animals to get our meat. How big of an impact does the meat industry have on the environment? Yeah. So ⁓ the environmental impacts of food systems in general are huge. So the food system is one of the major contributor to environmental change. And then within the food system livestock sector. is the main contributor. if we look at the climate change, their livestock sector alone contributes about 20 % of all climate impact that is caused by human activities. And then ⁓ if we consider ⁓ land use and also biodiversity, loss that is globally driven mainly by the expansion of agricultural land. ⁓ Their food systems cause about 80 % of all of these land use changes and that is mainly driven by livestock sector. For example, ⁓ clearing forests in ⁓ tropical areas for pasture land and feed protection like Amazon rainforest area. Most of the deforestation is caused by converting the land for soybean production for feed and also then using that land for pastures for cattle. ⁓ And then also if we think about pollution of ⁓ waterways, lakes, rivers, ocean. So these nutrient losses, nitrogen and phosphorus that are causing the eutrophication, which then causes ⁓ the exceeded growth of algae and ⁓ plant species, which basically disturbs the ecosystems of these waterways that is also ⁓ mainly driven by agriculture. and livestock production. And then of course water use is one which is increasingly becoming an important issue because the water scarcity is increasing in many areas due to ⁓ climate change. So there are also ⁓ agriculture and livestock. production are the main consumers of water. And especially if we consider also rainwater, because livestock production uses about 80 % of all agricultural land. then also most of the rainwater is, is used by, by livestock production. Yeah. So those are incredible numbers. So 20 % of, of, of all like. The 20 % number you mentioned, yeah, climate impact. that's huge. that's mainly, it's water use. It's also the food we need to create in order to feed all the cattle. Yeah, it includes also the feed. yeah, all of these numbers, they include all the... ⁓ processes that are needed for the livestock production. the feed production is one ⁓ major part for the climate impact also. The emissions from the cattle, so especially ⁓ ruminant species. basically ⁓ cattle, dairy, cows, beef cattle, ⁓ and then also ⁓ sheep. are ruminant. So when they eat, ⁓ they emit methane emissions as a part of the digestion process. these methane emissions are ⁓ one important aspect of this climate impact. And that's why also if we compare the climate impact of different types of livestock products, then beef ⁓ and sheep meat. has substantially higher carbon footprint compared to ⁓ pork and poultry because pigs and poultry, they don't produce these methane emissions as part of their feed, digestion process. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not a vegetarian, but I do eat meat. Therefore, but of course you see like it's still like the idea that we that we're also killing all these animals apart from from the emissions is also pretty sad, of course. And then we have rules in place, at least in Europe, we have rules in place that like the slaughtering process is supposed to happen in ⁓ a semi ethical manner. However, even in the Netherlands, which. is supposed to be a very well organized country with a strict rule of law. Even in our country, we see a lot of scandals involving slaughterhouses where these slaughterhouses aren't following the rules and are treating a lot of these animals ⁓ in a horrible manner. So I can also imagine that if we were able to have lab-grown meat that we can alleviate a lot of animal harm as well, apart from the fact that we could potentially help the environment. Yeah. And it's not only the slaughterhouses, but of course, ⁓ even more important is how the animals are treated when they are living. So, then of course, this industrial farming systems where animals have ⁓ very little space and they are kept indoors and they are not able to behave like they would be naturally behaving and they don't necessarily have access to outdoors and ⁓ these kind of things. this is also a major ⁓ ethical issue that is related to livestock farming. And then another issue is also the increased risk for different kinds of zoonoses. different, we have had these examples of avian flu and the mad cow disease and all sorts of pandemics that are caused by livestock farming and intensive livestock production. Also the use of antibiotics and the risks for antibiotic ⁓ resistance is an important issue now because most of antibiotics is actually used for livestock protection. So in many countries, antibiotics are used as prevention of different diseases and the more we have antibiotics, used in general, the higher risks there are also for antibiotic resistance and the development of these kind of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. then if we humans get those bacteria and they cause some disease, then we cannot treat these diseases with the antibiotics. So this is a huge issue. as well. ⁓ wow. I'd never consider that. So because ⁓ antibiotics are used in the animals in order to prevent them from becoming sick, when that ends up in the meat and when we then consume the meat, that means that we build up this resistance to antibiotics. Therefore, if we get sick and actually need antibiotics, they don't work on our own bodies anymore, which could lead to very dangerous situations. Yeah. And it's not necessarily the meat, but the fact that we are using antibiotics for the animals, the antibiotics are going somewhere. So then they are in the environment and in the waterways and everywhere. So then, yeah, it's not necessarily that it would be in the meat because generally there is some period after the animals get the antibiotics that it is not allowed to slaughter the animal or milk the dairy cows so that the antibiotic ⁓ residues in the food products is not too high. But in general, the antibiotics when we use it, it goes everywhere in the environment and when we have more antibiotics around ⁓ in the environment and the risks for this development of ⁓ antibiotic resistant bacteria is also higher. Yeah, interesting. I had no idea. So we have a bunch of incentives in place. The meat industry is horrible for the environment. There's animal cruelty happening on a day to day basis, the antibiotics situation. So we have a lot of incentives in place to ⁓ come up with alternatives for this meat industry. When did we first think of the idea that we could potentially grow meat or cultivate meat in a laboratory. When did this idea first come about? Yeah. So these ideas are actually many decades old. So there have been at the idea level, these kind of developments going on, but it's really like, I would say 2007, Since then, the actual development of cultivated meat started to expand and when there were actual research groups developing cultivated meat, mainly in the Netherlands, so the first cultivated meat A patent was also in the Netherlands. that's where the development mainly started. then later on it started to be worldwide, ⁓ different companies and research units as well developing ⁓ cultivated meat. Interesting. it's about 20 years ago that we started to think about growing ⁓ meat in a laboratory. Can you maybe walk me through the process of what this looks like? So where do we start? How can we grow, go from nothing to a piece of meat? So basically the The starts so that we take the cells from an animal. So the cells can be taken from the embryo. So then they are these kind of embryonic stem cells which are capable of becoming any type of cells and they divide. But it is also possible to take the cells from the muscle. tissue, so this kind of fine ⁓ needle ⁓ sample. So there is no need to kill the animal necessarily. So the cells can be also taken from a living animal. And ⁓ because the ⁓ muscle tissue also includes this kind of ⁓ satellite cells, which are capable of dividing. And, sorry. then first the cells are duplicated. So they start to divide so we can expand the cell number and the cells are grown in this kind of what we call culture medium, which is basically a solution of water and different kinds of vitamins and minerals and sugar proteins, amino acids that the cells need for growing. ⁓ then when the cell number has ⁓ expanded enough, ⁓ it is actually possible to use these, we call them undifferentiated cells. So this single cell mass basically. for the final food product. now there have been many companies and using these kind of undifferentiated sales for their ⁓ pilot products because then the process is much shorter. But then if we want to aim at some sort of whole meat texture, so ⁓ mimicking closer to steak or have a better texture, ⁓ in this our meat product, then there is this differentiation process when these cells are differentiated so that they start to or they differentiate to muscle cells and then when they are muscle cells they are not capable of dividing anymore but then they start to ⁓ fuse together and built this muscle tissue. basically in theory, it would be possible to produce a stake ⁓ structure. There have been some examples of this kind of ⁓ more developed tissue. Some companies and research institutes have developed it, but then that's much more challenging and also more time consuming. ⁓ and uses more, more resources. ⁓ so, yeah, so that is the process in short. Yeah. Interesting. And how long does it take to go from a stem cell, ⁓ to the finished product, if you will. So it really depends on what the finished product is and then of course, how, how long like this, ⁓ ⁓ a different or the phase when these cells are duplicated, like how much cells, what is the number or the initial number of cells, like how long it would need to need to first duplicate them. yeah, ⁓ so in some of the studies what we have done for the environmental assessments, for example, we have assumed about three, four weeks. Okay. So three to four weeks. if you compare that to, let's say, mean, obviously three to four weeks for, for a piece of meat, but if we are talking about regular animals, some, some of them need years to grow. So in theory that's, yeah. So in theory that's much faster than if we were to work with, with living animals. Correct? Yeah. Yeah, it is much faster process and then, yeah, especially depending on what the final product is, it can be a lot faster. yeah, if there is continuous cell cultures, it's then possible to harvest the cells like continuously from the system. Yeah. And the water or the nutrients that this ⁓ growing process happens in what kind of fluid is that? What is in there that helps the meat grow? Yeah. basically the culture medium is a mix of water and all the nutrients that the ⁓ cells need. ⁓ the same basically nutrients that the animal would would get from the feed. there are carbohydrates which are generally glucose which comes from ⁓ some crops like maize or sugar peat or sugar cane. ⁓ Also there are studies where different kind of sources for the sugar are used for example in one of my studies, we modeled this use of cyanobacteria, which is kind of also called single cell algae, although it's not algae, but it is bacteria. But different kind of sources could be potentially used. So they could be also different than what we are now using for a feed for animals and also side streams from the food industry or even grass. there are now some developments where these both sugars, the carbohydrates and also the proteins, so the amino acids are extracted from grass. So then that is also one ⁓ possibility. So the amino acids at the moment, are mainly coming from synthetic amino acids. So these are similar, some livestock also, pigs and at least maybe poultry also may get some this kind of synthetic amino acids as well. So they are basically same thing that is used for us feed at the moment as well. And then yeah, these vitamins and and minerals, which is also not that different because we also add currently vitamins and minerals to the feed of livestock. But then one thing which is different are these growth factors, is mainly like traditionally when these kind of cell culturing technologies have been used. The growth factors comes from the fetal bovine serum. So that is animal-based. And this is now a bit challenging in cultivated meat production because of course we don't want to use animal-sourced ingredients and the fetal bovine serum is also very expensive because it's basically blood that is taken from unborn calf. And so if a ⁓ pregnant cow comes to the slaughterhouse, when the animal is slaughtered, ⁓ the ⁓ serum, the blood from this ⁓ unborn calf has been taken. So everybody can understand that this ⁓ is not abundant source of ⁓ this serum and it's very expensive and it's also still using animals and there are ethical issues related to this. So this is something that cultivated meat production will not be able to use in commercial scale production. ⁓ So then there have been many developments for replacing this fetal bovine serum with ⁓ other ⁓ ingredients that are not animal source. for example, some bacteria can synthesize these kind of proteins that can be used to replace this ⁓ fetal bovine serum. ⁓ Yeah, there are different kinds of developments and there are already available this kind of serum free ⁓ culture medium. So many companies are now able to cultivate the cells without the ⁓ Fetalpovinseum. But yeah, are still some challenges and development also needed more in that. the sector that how to replace the feed up of an serum also how to make the culture medium ⁓ cheap enough because the traditional way of doing this animal cell culturing it's mainly for pharmaceutical purposes where the products are much more ⁓ expensive than food. So this is one of the main challenge is to lower the costs of this nutrient solution and especially these serum free growth factors. Yeah. So if I understand correctly, we are able to grow meat in a laboratory. The technology is there. However, the way we currently do it isn't economically viable because ⁓ part of the nutrient solution that we need is extremely expensive and therefore prohibits us from doing this at a larger scale. Yeah. I mean, like there are now some companies that are able to cultivate this cultivated meat also ⁓ without using the ⁓ animal source. ingredients as nutrient sources, but it's still the whole process is quite ⁓ expensive. so there are also other factors in the ⁓ culture medium that are costly. So then, yeah, more development is still needed to lower the cost. yes, in theory it is possible even without animal-based ingredients so we can ⁓ grow these cells, but yeah, it is still ⁓ expensive. But price is going down all the time and more research, ⁓ also primary research not only because this is also a bit of an issue that There is not much primary research done at the universities ⁓ and research institutes for the cultivated meat development because very soon when this development kind of started to expand, ⁓ companies were starting to get funding and a lot of startups started. there was no primary research that the companies could use. So then it basically went so that the startup companies had to do the research. ⁓ that's why, and then also because there were so many startup companies that kind of indicated the ⁓ research funder funding sector that, well, the technology is already ready. So there is no need for to fund ⁓ actual academic research anymore because there are so many startup companies already and the startup companies are saying that they will commercialize the products in couple of years. So the research funders were like, okay, we are not giving any money for cultivated meat ⁓ research because the the companies will anyway commercialize the products very soon. So there is no need for primary research. But that was not the case. Like it's still not the case. Like there is still a lot of research needed for ⁓ primary research to figure out how we can actually ⁓ lower the costs, how we can optimize the ⁓ The nutrient solution, the sculpture medium, what kind of animal free ingredients we could use, how we can ⁓ get it cost efficient. There is a lot of research still needed for the cell line developments and optimizing the cells as well, that they are capable of ⁓ Staying alive longer with this animal free culture medium and then ⁓ duplicating long enough that it is actually possible to scale up the production to large scale bioreactors. So bioreactors are these tanks where the cells grow. So the scale up, the development of these kind of bioreactors and the ⁓ whole bioprocesses for cultivating meat and especially if we want to go beyond this ⁓ single cell mass and go to this more structured ⁓ meat, steak ⁓ type of meat, then there is a lot of development how we can actually make the whole process cost efficient. And this is actually now visible because the number of startup companies started to increase very rapidly after this 2007. And then now the number of startup companies is going down because many of these founders of the companies, they are ⁓ maybe starting to get frustrated because the development was not as fast as the companies were first promising and there are no products on the markets and still many challenges. then, ⁓ yeah, so then now actually the research funder bodies are starting to step in and there have been some ⁓ big academic research funding also received in the recent or the past few years in some countries at least. then yeah maybe it was a bit too fast to go to fund all of these startups and then not funding the basic ⁓ research on cultivated meat. So now, yeah, this is really important message that the cultivated meat still requires ⁓ more primary research before it can be actually commercialized in an economically feasible way that the price of the products could be also competitive. to livestock products. ⁓ yeah, so it's not, I would say that the cultivated meat is not a short term solution. so it could be something then in the longer term, but the more development is needed. Yeah. And you mentioned price as being one of the factors, which I completely agree if we can have lab-grown meat on the market, but it's insanely expensive. No one is going to buy it. However, no one is also going to buy it if it doesn't taste good. So the quality of the product has to be good as well. What is the current state of the cultivated meat? Is it exactly the same? What about the flavor? What about the shape, the texture? I'm very curious. Have you had it? Yeah, actually I have tasted a few prototypes and of course the taste is in a way interesting because taste we can quite easily ⁓ mimic by using some flavor agents. So ⁓ for example chicken, there is even available in the supermarkets ⁓ animal free chicken soup which tastes like ⁓ chicken. So chicken flavor, we can have animal free chicken flavor and add that if we want to mimic ⁓ chicken. then that's ⁓ the taste is not so much of an issue. But then ⁓ the texture is maybe more challenging. ⁓ And many of the products that have been available so far, have been these undifferentiated cells. So it's not yet the ⁓ steak texture. So it's basically just the single cell mass that is then mixed with some other plant-based ingredients. So then, yeah, of course the texture is then not similar to ⁓ meat, but these products that have been available, for example, the chicken nuggets in Singapore. So this really it's a chicken nugget. So anyway, it's a processed product. So it's not even trying to mimic the same texture than whole. ⁓ meat. ⁓ But I think what is the benefit of cultivated meat also in terms of taste is that the taste of the cells itself is quite neutral. then especially if we compare to plant-based alternatives, ⁓ because if we have, for example, plant-based ⁓ chicken nuggets like soybean or or ⁓ pea protein ⁓ chicken nugget, then there is this off flavor coming from these ⁓ beans or many of these plant-based ingredients. have some kind of distinct off flavor, which is very different to animal-based products. So the benefit with these cultivated meat cells is that there is no off flavor that needs to be hidden. ⁓ When the ingredient has very neutral taste, it's very good for the food industry because it's easy to play with the ⁓ material that you don't need to hide anything, but then it's easier to add a flavor. So I think this is the ⁓ benefit. Of course, all of these prototypes that have been available, are really only prototypes. there is further development going on. ⁓ And so we cannot even assume that they would be perfect ⁓ immediately. Yeah, I have also tasted this self cultivated salmon, which basically looks very similar. So in the US there is actually now this self-cultivated salmon available in some restaurants. So you can even actually go to these restaurants and just buy this self-cultivated salmon dish. so this was actually very exciting. I was in Seattle last year in the beginning of ⁓ October and it was the first time in my life when I actually bought, self-cultivated meat or fish. This was fish product that I paid for it because all the other, the previous times I have just been somewhere visiting a company or something where they just give me samples. But so yeah, this was an exciting development that now actually you can go to a restaurant and buy it. Of course in Singapore there has been also ⁓ in some restaurants earlier some cultivated meat products available. okay for the salmon it actually it looks like salmon ⁓ so in that sense it's and yeah if you would eat it with the dish I think ⁓ it would be quite nicely played the role of salmon. But then, if I would close my eyes and just taste it, I wouldn't necessarily know that it is salmon. But then actually somebody had tasted similar type of salmon, but it was smoked salmon. So it had the smoked flavor. And they said that that tasted like salmon. ⁓ smoked salmon, but this was not smoked. I ate. So yeah, I think there is still a little bit more development needed for the flavor in that product. But yeah, it's really one of the early examples, prototypes of the product. So of course the development is going on all the time. But yeah, again, there was no off flavor, so it didn't taste anything else. ⁓ either. So, developments and exciting to see what kind of products are ⁓ coming up in the future. Yeah, that's so interesting that you say that about the neutral flavor and having to get rid of the plant flavor or the bean flavor when people are making vegetarian products. I assume it must be very similar to when you want to make lemonade. Let's say you want to make a strawberry lemonade and you start with just tap water, neutral tap water. It's very easy to make lemonade because the only thing you have to add is the strawberry flavor and then you have strawberry flavored lemonade. But if you start not with tap water, but with Coca-Cola, for example, then you first have to neutralize the entire Coca-Cola flavor and then. Yeah. The strawberry flavor. I can see why that is ⁓ much easier to get to the right flavor. What about nutrients though? Because one of the reasons why people prefer real animal or fish products over these plant-based alternatives. Yes, you can have ⁓ soy and soy contains protein as well, but Like the quality of the protein that you get from animal-based protein is some of the best you can have for muscle growth, for recovery, et cetera. So what about the quality of the nutrients inside lab-grown meat? Is it very similar? Yeah, the quality of the proteins, because it is the same cell, it's animal ⁓ protein. So yes, that is ⁓ same quality, basically the protein. I mean, there haven't studies, I haven't seen any studies where this would have been really studied in detail, but just like in theory, the bioavailability of the protein from the... ⁓ Cultivated meat should be as good as from livestock meat as well. the protein, yeah, of course also the quality of the protein or the amino acids that are the parts of the protein. a human needs eight or nine essential amino acids and livestock products have all of these. And so then cultivated meat also has all of these because then with plant-based proteins, issue is that this amino acid composition is not always perfect. So all plants don't have all of them. So soy bean is one that has actually all the nine essential amino acids that human needs. But then otherwise on a vegan diet it is very important to eat both ⁓ legumes and grains. So then by combining ⁓ legumes like beans and peas and then grains like wheat and oats and barley, then or rice as well, then it is possible to get all the essential amino acids. But then ⁓ also the issue of the bioavailability, so how well the ⁓ proteins are digested from the plant-based protein sources is lower. then because with animal-based protein sources, we can actually digest close to 100 % of the proteins. But with plant-based it's slightly... lower depending on the crop. So it's somewhere like 80 percent maybe. So then we also need to eat more of the ⁓ protein when we are on completely plant-based diets. And then of course there is the issue that some people are very sensitive to beans for example that are not able to eat beans. So then these kind of cultivated meat products would be a good alternative for those people. Yeah. And can we in principle recreate any type of meat or fish? Because you mentioned salmon there, we spoke about beef, pork. Is there a limit to what we can create? I mean, no. not really like, ⁓ yeah, in theory it is possible to grow any type of cells what we can just obtain. But then there may be some specific issues for different species because ⁓ they don't always behave the same way. So sometimes some different ⁓ Yeah, like in the cell culturing process, there may be some differences in terms of what kind of ingredients are needed or how to optimize the process with different types of species. but yeah, in theory we could take cells from any animal and grow them. Yeah, that's insane. And just to we, we spoke about this briefly before, ⁓ but just by putting this, the stem cell in the nutrient vitamin water, the, the dekaderate, you will, you, it will just automatically grow if it's at the right temperature. Like nothing else has to, it just, it, it duplicates and duplicates and duplicates. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if the culture medium contains all the ⁓ nutrients that the cells need and the conditions are ⁓ right. So there is also some air needed and the temperature needs to be ⁓ correct and then also that the nutrients are available evenly. ⁓ everywhere, especially when the cell mass starts to increase. some sort of rotation or mixing the culture medium is needed. ⁓ yeah, the cells will grow. But then there is the issue with the number of duplication. So this is often the issue that the cells are not... is a limit how many times the cells will divide and then at some point they stop ⁓ dividing. So that's why there is also this cell line development needed because there are different ways of ⁓ getting the cells by the cell line development to duplicate longer. And there are also some other interesting developments going on like how by adding something in the culture medium it is possible to get the cells duplicate ⁓ much longer time or even forever. yeah, this is actually also important point in terms of that if the cells can duplicate basically forever, it also means that we don't need new cells. from the livestock. So we don't actually need to go to punch the animals anymore with the fine needle samples. So then the same ⁓ cell stock can be utilized. So, but yeah, this is also where a lot of research and development is still needed to make the cells. And this is also like if we take a new ⁓ animal, species or new sample from the ⁓ livestock, then there is this cell development, cell line development needed always. there is some, like it's not so easy always just to take any cells from any animal and then that it would be the solution to just grow a lot of meat from that. So there is ⁓ some science needed before. before it's possible to grow large quantities of cells from that sample. Yeah. And that will be incredible if that's manageable because in theory, even vegans would be able to consume that meat, ⁓ given the fact that for growing the newer meat, wouldn't need any original animal material anymore. Yeah. Yeah, if I comment on this, because there are lots of like in the early times, especially there were lots of vegans actually starting and pushing the development of cultivated meat because they were actually vegans who love to eat meat, but they didn't want to eat it because of the animal rights and environmental ⁓ issues, ⁓ perspectives, but yeah, so this is we could. ⁓ produce ⁓ cultivated meat without using animals anymore like once the cells originally have taken from the animal but then we can just keep the same cell culture and if the culture medium is completely animal free so then the whole process would be animal free and for some vegans yeah they would be willing to eat but then of course there are some vegans who really don't want to still eat animals. they just don't like even the idea that we would eat anything that even mimics the animal flesh. they prefer to eat also plant-based food that is not trying to mimic meat. But yeah, for some vegans, it would be completely fine to eat cultivated meat. That's super cool. where, where does the technology stand today? Because at one side, it is my understanding that we still need a lot of research in order to produce lab grown meat at a, at a scale so that it would be in the supermarkets, for example. But then again, there are some examples. You mentioned the restaurant that you went to in the United States. where they serve ⁓ cultivated salmon, for example. I believe there's also a Dutch company who sells ⁓ sausages made from cultivated meat. So where do we stand today and what needs to happen in order to make this widely commercially available for consumers? Yeah, of course, the other issue, the price, so more development is needed for the technology development to get the price down. But then another issue is the regulatory approval because ⁓ in Europe it's not allowed to sell cultivated meat for food yet. there is ⁓ at the moment there is in the so the European Union it's the ⁓ European Food Agency that approves these novel foods. then ⁓ there are some applications. I think there are maybe two applications at least ⁓ at the moment that are being evaluated or are in the approval process. hopefully soon also cultivated meat will be approved in Europe and we can have it here as well. And so at the moment only few countries have approved it. So Singapore was the first and then in the US some products have been approved. I think Israel is also one and ⁓ In Europe, are some countries that have this permission that they can do tastings so that people can taste it, but it's not yet approved for food. In Europe, there is also one product approved for pet food, for pets ⁓ cultivated meat. ⁓ But yeah, when do we have them in the supermarket? because then of course these products that are now being sold, I still don't know. example, this self-cultivated salmon that I was eating in the US, is the company actually making any profit by selling it? Or is it more like that they are just wanting to have some products available for the consumers, but they are not actually making any profit with it, but they are just using the ⁓ funders' basically to produce it. then, ⁓ yeah, this is a question that I don't think anybody knows that when we could actually, what kind of breakthroughs or maybe we know what kind of scientific breakthroughs we need, but then when this will happen that we can actually get the price down enough that it would be also economically feasible for the companies to produce it for profit. So, but I would say that anyway, it will take some time because also these approval processes, these regulatory approval processes often take a few years and then how long these developments. So I don't think like that within the next 10 years we cultivated meat would be anything very major. So maybe 15, 20 years hopefully we would have more. available in the supermarkets as well. Cool. That's a good timeline. It's still a long time though, but it would be nice if we can crack this. One use case that I had to think about, I wonder if this is being discussed in the scientific scene as well, is This could also be game changing for space exploration, right? If we were to ever build a base on Mars or on the moon, for example, it's like it's going to be very difficult for us to even survive, let alone animals. So if we want to have the people, the future people of Mars, if you will. enjoy ⁓ a nice steak as well. This could be a game changer. Is this something that's being discussed as well as a potential use case? Yeah, it has been ⁓ discussed as well. But then, ⁓ maybe we have these other slightly simpler solutions that are also using cell cultivation technology. for example, just cultivating ⁓ bacteria or this kind of single ⁓ cell ⁓ fungi or yeast. So these kind of processes are even more feasible for this ⁓ space because also some of these bacteria kind of, let's say, bacteria sounds like ⁓ not nice option for food, but let's say microbial proteins. So it is actually meat, a lot of bacteria and we have, everybody knows we have lots of bacteria in our ⁓ gut system and everywhere. So it's not actually that bad or also like these fermented products like yogurts and ⁓ cheese. so they also use bacteria for the processes. So, but then anyway, there are these kind of bacteria that don't need any source of agriculture products for the growth medium because for cultivated meat we still need these sugars and amino acids. then some bacteria can use only carbon dioxide and water and then some nutrients. So those kind of ⁓ technologies are even more feasible for space because in the space you could obtain those kind of ingredients. then ⁓ these agriculture crops are a bit more challenging. But yeah, of course it could be possible to, ⁓ in theory, to produce cultivated meat in space as well if we could just then transport them. ⁓ the source of these nutrients ⁓ from here and it's possible to store the nutrients, the nutrients in powder form. then, ⁓ then it would be possible to, ⁓ to, to store them longer, longer time as well. it's not taking so much space. Yeah. I mean, ⁓ we'll, ⁓ let's first. this cookie for the people on earth because currently we don't really have anyone in space. have a final question. ⁓ What do you hope the meat industry will look like going forward? ⁓ What would a good future for you be? So yeah, what I would like to emphasize even though we have been talking about cultivated meat now an hour, but But yeah, so it's really not a short term solution. So that's why we cannot just rely on cultivated meat that is going to solve all the issues. And we don't need to do anything now because then if we do that, it's going to be too late. So we need to. ⁓ basically reduce the climate impact and other environmental impacts now. then we cannot wait another 20 years before we start to act. So we need to basically rely on the alternative protein sources that are available now. And there are a lot of other options also being developed all the time. So other alternatives to livestock products. So these plant-based alternatives are becoming better all the time. ⁓ then we have also many other, also these other cell-cultivated foods, like I already mentioned, these microbiol proteins, also the fungal proteins, ⁓ And then we have algae. There are lots of different types of algae. So algae is also an interesting ⁓ research field for alternative proteins because it has not really been explored all the potential of different species that would be the best for food applications. We have also a lot of opportunities with utilizing different types of side streams from the food industry ⁓ to extract some proteins for example from the side streams ⁓ of some ⁓ vegetable manufacturing for example or then like I mentioned the grass for ⁓ ingredients for cultivated meat, but actually we could also eat ⁓ proteins extracted from grass. And grass is good because it grows very well here in the Nordics in Finland as well. So ⁓ that's also ⁓ very interesting development. yeah, so we should be kind of brave and ⁓ try different kind of and develop different kind of alternative proteins and then ⁓ at least try to reduce the amount of livestock products first because that would even help if everybody would try to reduce. So that's much better than if only a few percent will switch completely to vegan diets. So just think about what is the quantity of livestock products that we absolutely need and then could we have maybe even first like one meal per day which is plant-based and then... one meal with meat, so that would make a huge difference. So it's not always like that you need to be either completely plant-based or then completely mixed diet. So the reduction would be already very, very, very useful. But yeah, so I guess the answer to your question, how I see the future. of food systems. So I would see that we will have a lot more variety of protein sources. ⁓ then maybe the livestock sector we could ⁓ produce less, but then the meat and livestock products that we would produce are produced in a more sustainable way. And also considering the animal welfare so that the animals would have better conditions as well if we don't have pressure to intensify the livestock sector so much because we would have more of these alternative proteins available as well. Well, let's hope so. I think the future looks pretty bright if we can pull this off. Anna, thank you so much for today. This was very, very interesting. Where can people go if they want to keep up with your research? my research would be my University of Helsinki website. So I think, yeah, that's the best for my research. But yeah, in general, think for cultivated meat, are also some of these. nonprofit organizations that I think also the Good Food Institute has very good website with where they collect the latest research papers as well to these topics. Perfect. Well, Hannah, I'll put it in the show notes and thanks again. This was super, super interesting. Yeah. Thank you very much.