It’s not easy for laboratory scientists to get out of the lab. But when they do, big things can happen…
October 20, 2014: I emailed David Anchel, a cell biologist that had been keen to take animals out of the food system, and asked him to fly to San Francisco with me.
David had been in touch with me over a year, catching up often on how his PhD was going, how New Harvest could grow, and how he could contribute to the field of cellular agriculture – ag products made from the cellular level up. David was so committed to the cause. Culturing animal products without animals is what got him into biology.
David happily agreed, excited to meet Ryan and Perumal from Muufri and other people from New Harvest’s community at a couple of events.
November 5, 2014: We land in San Francisco
November 6, 2014: We go to a conference and meet Arturo Elizondo
We (David, Ryan, Perumal and myself) were sitting at a table at a (not so exciting, to be honest) conference, introducing ourselves and our missions. Others at the table were fairly uncomfortable with New Harvest’s work, seeing it as unnatural and bizarre. After some thoughtful conversation, they did end up agreeing that they would rather eat cultured meat than meat from a factory farmed animal, so that was progress! As we went around the table, to our surprise, Arturo introduced himself by saying he had just written a paper on food security in China, and that the conclusion was that the Chinese government should be funding research into cultured meat. Arturo said he watched my TEDx talk and that’s how the paper’s conclusion came together.
I was pretty shocked because I thought we were the only technology-focused foodies in the room! We ended up having dinner with Arturo and finding out more about him. He had recently turned down prestigious job offers to become a pioneer in the emerging cellular agriculture space!
I asked Arturo to come by Muufri’s lab in a few days to meet more people from New Harvest.
November 9, 2014: New Harvest Salon at Muufri’s HQ
We get together with the several New Harvest donors, scientists and supporters in the area (a few people flew in too!) at Muufri’s headquarters, which we’re showing off because it is much more outfitted with equipment and staff than the last time we held a salon there. Here are some of us hanging out in the lab space a little later in the evening!
Over the course of our trip, David joins in on several meetings, inspired by what our community is doing and our approaches to advance animal products made without animals. He’s inspired, particularly after seeing Muufri’s lab and thinking through their method to use yeast to make milk proteins. As time goes on, David begins to look increasingly wilted throughout the day – we soon find out it’s because he’s been deep into the scientific literature at night, looking at how to make egg proteins in culture. The idea of creating a chicken’s oviduct in vitro came up… but didn’t make the cut. Eggs, particularly egg whites, could be made much more directly in yeast culture.
In the last couple days of our trip, David has put together a detailed proposal of how to make egg whites, including cost comparisons, and a scientific plan.
On the flight back, the night after the salon, I wonder how we can quickly turn David’s work into a reality. We decided a fast way to do that would be through the IndieBio SF accelerator, a related-but-separate accelerator from the one Muufri went through. They were accepting applications.
But David needed a collaborator – he could focus on lab work but he needed someone to focus on the business plan, doing market research, reaching investors and creating a future consumer base. I had an idea of who that could be.
November 12, 2014: Arturo, I have an idea…
Two days after getting back from San Francisco, I emailed Arturo with an idea – would he want to join David in making eggs without hens? With New Harvest’s help and guidance, I knew we could put together a good proposal in a short amount of time.
Arturo said yes the same day. By the next morning we had already gotten a Google doc started with our application materials.
November 17, 2014: The “New Harvest Egg Project” is submitted
After 5 long days of Skyping and Google Doc-ing… we submit our detailed proposal.
November 20, 2014: “New Harvest Egg Project” invited for interview
We work harder on a more detailed scientific plan to discuss with Ron Shigeta, who is doing science due diligence for IndieBio. Overall the IndieBio folks – Arvind Gupta, Ryan Bethencourt, and Ron are totally excited about our project.
David and Arturo started brainstorming what the company’s name could be. “Clara” means egg white in Spanish, Arturo’s first language. It was also the name of David’s dog!!! Clara Foods was born.
December 10, 2014: “New Harvest Egg Project” gets $50K + lab space to make egg whites without hens.
We’re moving to California!! IndieBio’s program is set up to start March 1, but we make arrangements for David and Arturo to get there ahead of time. David moves to San Fran in late January, and gets right to work on the science at Berkeley Biolabs, so we can really hit the ground running once we get to IndieBio.
March 2, 2015: Getting started at IndieBio
Clara Foods gets to work at IndieBio – rigorously building out their business plan and getting in touch with customers and investors. Their science is moving along quickly thanks to their pre-work at Berkeley Biolabs, so they have samples to show visitors like Joshua Katcher of The Discerning Brute.
They also ace their practice pitches!
May 29, 2015: Clara Foods hits the stage with New Harvest, Muufri, Pembient and Tomato Sushi to talk about the Edible Bioeconomy
New Harvest and IndieBio co-hosted a really wonderful event on the future (or rather the emerging present) of animal products made without animals.
June 11, 2015: Demo Day!!!
Clara and the 10 other biotech companies at IndieBio present their pitches at Demo Day. The event sold out quickly weeks before. Watch the pitches from Demo Day here!
July 9, 2015: Clara Foods announces they have completed their seed round: $1.75 million!
Within a matter of months, Clara Foods attracted $1.75 million to making animal products without animals, with the story covered in TechCrunch. Clara Foods definitely comes out of IndieBio as the most successfully invested in company – raising the money they needed even before hitting the stage at Demo Day!
Here’s to another great success that began with the spark that only New Harvest could create.
All the best David and Arturo!!!
A dispatch from our social media guru, Erin Kim:
On May 29th, I had the great pleasure of attending the very first Edible Bioeconomy event in San Francisco, hosted jointly by New Harvest and Indie Bio. The event was a way for people who are involved and interested in the emerging economy that is being built around sustainable animal products (including but not limited to leather, eggs, dairy products, and eventually meat) to have the chance to taste and hear firsthand about some of what has been developed thus far, while engaging in discussions about how to tackle practical challenges like what language can be used to describe these kinds of products, how to overcome the misinformation and confusion felt by the general public on how science relates to food, and other topics.
I flew in from Edmonton primarily to attend, knowing the unbearable FOMO I would suffer if I’d just stayed at home and heard about it after the fact. Tickets easily sold out and over 130 people came out, including investors, donors, people working in various areas of food tech, and enthusiastic future consumers. It was an amazing feeling to be in a room full of so many brilliant people supportive of a post-animal bioeconomy, while having the privilege of being some of the first in the world to enjoy products like the delicious (and very tuna-like!) Tomato Sushi by Master Chef James Corwell, “chirps” (chips made from cricket protein) by Six Foods, and local seasonal artisan bear from San Francisco-based Almanac Beer Co. Needless to say the event was a huge success, and I was thrilled when Isha told me that it will become a recurring series. (If you’d like to be informed about future dates, sign up for our newsletter at http://t.co/tF7iTQB2pN)
The speaker panel consisted of:
-Ryan Pandya, CEO of Muufri, who are working on genetically engineering yeast to produce cow’s milk and products like cheese;
-Arturo Elizondo, CEO of Clara Foods, creating egg whites without chickens by using yeast to convert sugar water into egg protein;
-Matthew Markus, CEO of Pembient, the makers of 3D printed rhino horn and other wildlife products (such as elephant ivory and tiger bone) to subvert poaching and extinction of endangered animals;
-and Master Chef James Corwell, founder of Tomato Sushi, a company producing a completely plant-based and sustainable alternative to tuna, by using the sous vide method of cooking tomatoes!
Each of these companies is helping to pave the way for the diverse, sustainable, and ethical bioeconomy that New Harvest envisions and is working so hard to build. They have already received impressive amounts of investor funding, advance consumer interest, and media coverage. The fact that enough of this innovation in food is currently taking place to spark events like The Edible Bioeconomy is truly an amazing thing. I have been a part of the New Harvest community for a little over a year, but in that time alone, the huge developments and growth that have taken place are assurance that engaging with science and business to solve for unsustainable, cruel, and outdated human consumption habits is not only the “right” thing to do, but also rewarding for all involved. There is only room to grow in this new industry (another reason why I think the investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs getting involved are so smart). We will continue to see new and exciting additions to this space, and I can’t wait for what the next Edible Bioeconomy nights will look like, and what products will become available for guests to try in the near future!
On a personal note, as much of my work doing social media for New Harvest is done remotely, it’s always so wonderful to finally get to meet people who I have come to know through my volunteer work with New Harvest, with whom I mostly communicate with via Skype, Twitter, or e-mail. Meeting the brilliant young people behind Muufri and Clara Foods was especially meaningful, as these two companies came into existence directly as a result of New Harvest’s efforts connecting scientists and entrepreneurs who had specific visions and turning that into a viable business. As they mentioned on the panel, for Ryan, it was that as a vegan he was satisfied with the meat substitutes that were available, but felt there was a “missing piece” when it came to dairy; and for Arturo it was the re-imagining of the egg white as a more sustainable, ethical source of protein than the increasingly outdated and problematic method of using chickens). Watching these two startups grow from a mere idea to eventually becoming real contenders in the food industry has been extremely inspiring and serves as a powerful example of the incredible work that New Harvest is doing.
Even if it takes booking a last-minute flight across the continent to attend The Edible Bioeconomy, I absolutely recommend it. I’ll definitely be doing it again!
Written by Erin Kim
Ntombi, one of the 5,055 black rhinos left in the world. We want to sequence her genome.
New Harvest partnering with Pembient and the University of Washington on open source project
Read the full newsletter here.
The best way to keep up with New Harvest and our activities, meet our community, and see how you can get involved is to subscribe to our newsletter.
Image featured in article: click to read the full debate!
Is cultured meat one of the “four futures?”
In a new article the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) has developed a look at what various groups consider the “meat problem”, and from there developed four extreme scenarios about the future of meat.
The issues they identified were a higher demand for food, the environmental cost of meat, the interest of sellers to maximize sales, the ideological and religious arguments for a certain diet, the price of meat, the health benefits and detriments, and the various implications for class strucutre.
Among the four futures they predicted was the “Architected Flesh” scenario. It’s 2035, and after plagues of zoonotic (livestock-born) diseases and rising costs of meat, governments and consumers start to support mimic meats and milk. In this future, big business follows suit, and the call for cultured meat is raised. As more countries support cultured meat, the environment recovers, food restrictions based on religion are no longer an issue, and health goes up as meat is made healthier. Meanwhile, better quality cultured meat becomes more available across all income levels.
The other futures include Calibrated Carnivory, Livestock on Leftovers, and Fruits of the Earth.
Calibrated Carnivory is concerned with the demand for food, and the demand for sustainability. In this future, GMOs, antibiotics, hormones, and cramped living conditions are used to decrease the amount of feed, and increase the amount of meat on each animal. Waste products are used as fertilizer and heating. This future can be defined as “market driven” as chicken and fish are the easiest to raise in cramped conditions, and the easiest to sell as diet foods. While some people in the future care about the animals’ rights, they are convinced to withhold their complaints because the price of meat decreases.
Livestock on Leftovers’ main concern is big business and a return to “the past.” This future follows a paleo-style diet. Cities are forsaken with for small farms, where animals are raised on non-arable pastures, eating inedible grasses, and manure is used as fertilizer for crops. Hunting is also popular. However, FCRN points out the inevitable problem with this model: as population grows, small farms do not produce enough meat or milk to meet the demand, and a return to large industrial farms is inevitable. Although the FCRN avoided mentioning it, “Livestock on Leftovers” is likely to lead straight into “Calibrated Carnivory.”
The fourth future that the FCRN projected is one based on environmental impacts, and a government push for vegetarianism as a more sustainable method of feeding the world. Meat is a rarity, and livestock are kept only in nonarable plots, or places where their manure helps the harvest. The land once used to grow food for livestock is now optimized to grow crops for human On this diet, the FCRN predicts better eating habits and health, but this future is rife with anxiety over the “ecological price” of food.
So which future do you want? Or is there another option?
The article’s purpose is not to give consumers four options for the future. The purpose is to identify the “issues with meat” and then demonstrate how different concerns lead to different outcomes. Sustainability, supply and demand, humanitarianism. The future will be shaped by what we choose to focus on.
Want to know more about how our top priorities shape the future?
Download the article pdf here.
On May 6th, Isha Datar spoke at the Empiricist League’s meeting about the food of the future.
We start in the past: the history of biotechnology to make food favorites like beer, cheeses, yogurts, to create all the vegetables we know today. More recently, it’s also been able to give us new medicines and eco-friendly products.
Nutrition, medicine, environment, what other problems can biotechnology fix? How about the issues that go along with livestock: humanitarian concerns, environmental impacts, epidemics, supply and demands figures:
The solution? Isha Datar says cultured meat.
Biotechnology has gradually turned the chicken from a bird:
To a meat making machine:
Feathers optional:
If we want a chicken breast, why not start from the cellular level? Like Mark Post’s burger, made without a cow?
And why stop there? Biotechnology can make leather, milk, and egg whites.
As biotechnology of food goes up, what goes down?
Cost.
To find out more about how biotechnology has, and is continuing, to make life better, healthier, and tastier, check out the full speech.
And thanks to the Empiricist League for hosting this event!
May 29th, New Harvest and Indie.Bio will be hosting a salon-style event to explore the new food bioeconomy.
Come to San Francisco, chat about Muufri, Clara Foods, and Pembient, and sample nibbles from Tomato Sushi and Alchemy breweries!
While in DC for the Bioeconomy and Climate Change Forum, Isha & Gilonne met with US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to discuss how New Harvest is addressing issues of climate change and public health.
Edible Bioeconomy Salon Discussion May 29 San Francisco / Overview of New Harvest in DC
Read the whole newsletter here.
The best way to keep up with New Harvest and our activities, meet our community, and see how you can get involved is to subscribe to our newsletter.
Maastricht, The Netherlands, site of the 1st International Symposium on Cultured Meat, Oct 18-20, 2015.
The First International Cultured Meat Symposium: Speakers, Program, and Plans!
Read the whole newsletter here.
The best way to keep up with New Harvest and our activities, meet our community, and see how you can get involved is to subscribe to our newsletter.
Willem van Eelen, a pioneer of cultured meat, passed away on Feb. 24, 2015. Photo by Michael Hughes.
Gilonne D’Origny Hired As Developmental Director / Clara Foods Prepares To Reveal Egg White Prototype / Loss of “Godfather of Cultured Meat” / New York Event
Read the whole newsletter here.
The best way to keep up with New Harvest and our activities, meet our community, and see how you can get involved is to subscribe to our newsletter.
On February 24, 2015 the cultured meat movement lost one of its pioneers, Willem Frederik van Eelen.
Van Eelen (born on July 4th, 1923, in Dutch-controlled Indonesia) contributed an enormous amount of time, energy and ingenuity to this cause, catalyzing interest in the Netherlands and abroad and helping scientists to find the funding necessary to pursue their work. Van Eelen’s personal reasons for taking an interested in cultured meat have been widely publicized: a POW in Japanese camps in Indonesia during WWII, van Eelen was exposed to hunger (by his own report almost dying of malnutrition) and he witnessed his captors’ very cruel treatment of non-human animals. He took from these experiences a deep interest in food, and a sense of moral responsibility to work against unnecessary animal suffering (he did, notably, remain a meat eater). Following the liberation of the camps by the Allies, van Eelen returned to the Netherlands and studied psychology and medicine – and he subsequently witnessed medical experiments that inspired his later interest in cultured meat.
Indeed, van Eelen observed cells grown through tissue culture techniques in the late 1950s-early 1960s, a period when cell culture – as Hannah Landecker describes in her book Culturing Life – had moved beyond the early experiments by scientists like Alexis Carrel, and towards increasingly large-scale models of culture production. In other words, this was a time when cell culture was “scaling up,” as research grants and investments helped to build out industrial facilities and advance medical research into diseases like polio. It was not inconceivable that tissue culture techniques would continue to grow and develop.
While most of his career was spent in medical and public health pursuits, van Eelen continued to think about the potential for meat to be industrially produced without the conventional raising and slaughter of animals. In the 1990s he entered into partnerships to create an in vitro meat process, and while the resulting laboratory work was unsuccessful, towards the end of the decade van Eelen did file several patents for cultured meat techniques in the Netherlands and the United States. Beginning in 2000, van Eelen, then in his 70s, organized a consortium of Dutch researchers and helped them to obtain grant funding from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs – with additional help from a consortium of food companies and universities. This led to four years of research, between 2005 and 2009, and while progress was never fast enough for van Eelen’s taste, it did produce not only very high-quality scientific work, but also the seeds of later projects, including Mark Post’s very well known work on the 2013 hamburger, funded by Sergey Brin.
Van Eelen’s desire to live long enough to see cultured meat appear in markets, was well-known. But we also know full well that biotechnology research moves more slowly than our visions of the future. Assuredly, if cultured meat production becomes part of our food system in years or decades to come, van Eelen will be recognized as one of the crucial architects of its creation.
Many thanks to Henk Haagsman for additional details regarding van Eelen’s life. And thanks to New Harvest community members who can offer additional details regarding van Eelen’s life and work.
Written by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft
Photo by Michael Hughes
