AMES, Iowa — The process to culture animal cells to produce food is evolving rapidly.
“Those of us at the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology have been interested in this new technology,” said Anna Dilger, associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois. “So, we decided to focus on challenges and uncertainties of this technology in the areas of techniques, sale and regulation of those products.”
The council, which was formed in 1972 to provide balanced, credible, science-based information about food and agriculture, recently released its commentary “Producing Food Products from Cultured. Animal Tissues.”
Several techniques to produce the cultivated cells were examined by the members of the task force that authored the paper, including cell line development.
“In these types of products, cells serve as the base of the product, and there are many different sources for these cells such as biopsies of living animals, cells derived from embryonic stem cells and other adult stem cells that exist in animal bodies,” Dilger said.
Currently, the cells being targeted are mainly muscle and fat cells.
“These are the main cell types that are present in conventionally produced meat,” Dilger said. “But to culture a whole tissue we need to cultivate other types of cells that are present in meat.”
Once the cell lines are developed, they need to be cultured at a large scale.
“This means moving from bench top techniques, which most of the time happens in milliliters or a few liters at a time to thousands or tens of thousands of liters,” Dilger said. “That means moving out of a culture dish and into a bioreactor.”
The goal of cultivating tissues to produce food is to mimic the texture, taste and composition of traditional meat.
Dilger talked about technical challenges that need to be overcome to scale up and bring the cultivated cell products to market.
“Cell lines will need to be screened for ease of propagation, nutritional content, traits of palatability and ease of manufacturing into meat products,” she said. “We will also need to work to lower manufacturing costs and scale up the production.”
Scaling up has its own challenges, Dilger said.
“It may work in a few liters, but that doesn’t always translate into thousands of liters in a bioreactor,” she said.
The task force identified three phases of what the cell cultured meat may look like.
• Phase 1: Cultivated cells mixed into a meat analogue, plant or fungus-type of meat product using the cultivated cells to provide nutrients or flavor to the product.
• Phase 2: Products composed entirely of cultivated cells like hamburger, sausages or nuggets that wouldn’t have the tissue structure expected in a steak or roast.
• Phase 3: Cultivated tissues containing many different cell types that mimic the taste and mouth feel of steaks, chops, roast or other whole muscle products.
“One of the more sticky issues in terms of the production of food from cultured animal cells has to due with the regulation and who will be responsible for regulating products,” Dilger said.
“These products will have aspects that overlap the areas of responsibility currently covered by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”
FDA currently regulates the ingredients used in meat and poultry products, veterinary products and it reviews new technologies.
The USDA is responsible for products that contain meat, inspection of all animal carcasses during the slaughter process, pre-approval of labeling of products and oversight of implementation of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point programs to mitigate food safety risk.
“In 2019, the USDA and FDA formalized a memorandum of understanding which outlined their approach towards the regulation of those food products and they established a working group to address how they are going to integrate their proposed regulation,” Dilger said.
“The MOU says the FDA will be responsible for cell collection, cell line development and the process that those cells and tissues are cultivated,” he said.
“It will transition from the FDA to the USDA at the time the cells and tissues are harvested and the USDA will be responsible for overseeing and regulating the manufacturing of food products.”
Another challenging issue is labeling of the emerging products.
“This is a large area of uncertainty because currently there are no products on the market that require labeling,” Dilger said.
Currently, meat products are labeled and defined based on a series of standards of identity.
“They list things like origin of the meats, addition of ingredients, types of processing used in the production of meat products and nutrient composition, especially the qualities of protein or fat,” Dilger said.
“Some people have hypothesized that cultivated cell products may be safer than traditional meat because those cultivated products lack the slaughter environment and that will eliminate many of the food safety risks that are posed in that environment,” he said.
“Remember these products will be at the same risk as traditional meat during the processing, packing and harvesting for contamination by other organisms,” Dilger said.
For more information about the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, go to www.cast-science.org.