Canada is making a big bet on advancing lab grown meat research.
What’s happening:
- Genome Canada, a government-funded non-profit focused on advancing genomics, is funding McMaster University with $10M to advance cultivated meat science
- The research will be co-led by tissue-engineering expert Ravi Selvaganapathy of McMaster's School of Biomedical Engineering
- The focus of the project is on attempting to lower costs of each aspect of the production method of producing cultivated meat in order to get closer to price parity
- Multiple researchers from leading universities all over Canada will come together to collaborate on the project, including experts in tissue engineering
- From cell lines, to scaffolding, to growth medium, to enhancing bioreactors the researchers will try to find innovative new ways to cut costs and optimize the entire process of cell based meat production
Why it matters:
- Seeing government participating in funding cultivated meat is a huge sign of validation for the future of cellular agriculture
- Scientific breakthroughs that bring cultivated meat closer to cost parity would unlock enormous value for startups working to bring lab grown meat to the masses
The intrigue:
- The ultimate goal is to produce slabs of cultured beef comparable to traditional steaks
- The researchers are planning to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence as part of the project
Going deeper:
- After the FDA approval of cultivated meat in the United States, countries around the world have started to take notice that cellular agriculture is rapidly accelerating towards global adoption
- Israel has committed $18M in funding devoted to a group of select companies and university research projects
- The Netherlands has committed $60M in funding into Cellular Agriculture Netherlands consortium
