Cellular agriculture
Cellular agriculture focuses on the production of agriculture products from cell cultures using a combination of biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology to create and design new methods of producing proteins, fats, and tissues that would otherwise come from traditional agriculture. Most of the industry is focused on animal products such as meat, milk, and eggs, produced in cell culture rather than raising and slaughtering farmed livestock which is associated with substantial global problems of detrimental environmental impacts (e.g. of meat production), animal welfare, food security and human health. Cellular agriculture is field of the biobased  economy. The most well known cellular agriculture concept is cultured meat. History. Although cellular agriculture is a nascent scientific discipline, cellular agriculture products were first commercialized in the early 20th century with insulin and rennet. On March 24, 1990, the FDA approved a bacterium that had been genetically engineered to produce rennet, making it the first genetically engineered product for food. Rennet is a mixture of enzymes that turns milk into curds and whey in cheese making. Traditionally, rennet is extracted from the inner lining of the fourth stomach of calves. Today, cheese making processes use rennet enzymes from genetically  engineered bacteria, fungi, or yeasts because they are unadulterated, more consistent, and less expensive than animal-derived rennet. In 2004, Jason Matheny founded New Harvest, whose mission is to "accelerate breakthroughs in cellular agriculture." New Harvest is the only organization focused exclusively on advancing the field of cellular agriculture and provided the first PhD funding specifically for cellular agriculture, at Tufts University. By 2014, "IndieBio", a synthetic biology accelerator in San Francisco, has incubated several cellular agriculture startups, hosting Muufri (making milk from cell culture, now Perfect Day Foods), The EVERY Company (making egg whites from cell culture), Gelzen (making  gelatin from bacteria and yeast, now Geltor), Afineur (making cultured coffee beans) and Pembient (making rhino horn). Muufri and The EVERY Company were both initially sponsored by New Harvest. In 2015, "Mercy for Animals" created "The Good Food Institute", which promotes plant-based and cellular agriculture. Also in 2015, Isha Datar coined the term "cellular agriculture" (often shortened to "cell ag") in a New Harvest Facebook group. On July 13, 2016, New Harvest hosted the world's first international conference on cellular agriculture in San Francisco, California. The day after the conference, New Harvest hosted the first closed-door workshop  for industry, academic, and government stakeholders in cellular agriculture. Research tools. Several key research tools are at the foundation of research in cellular agriculture. These include: Cell lines. A fundamental missing piece in the advancement of cultured meat is the availability of the appropriate cellular materials. While some methods and protocols from human and mouse cell culture may apply to agricultural cellular materials, it has become clear that most do not. This is evidenced by the fact that established protocols for creating human and mouse embryonic stem cells have not succeeded in establishing ungulate embryonic stem cell lines. The ideal  criteria for cell lines for the purpose of cultured meat production include immortality, high proliferative ability, surface independence, serum independence, and tissue-forming ability. The specific cell types most suitable for cellular agriculture are likely to differ from species to species. Growth media. Conventional methods for growing animal tissue in culture involves the use of fetal bovine serum (FBS). FBS is a blood product extracted from fetal calves. This product supplies cells with nutrients and stimulating growth factors, but is unsustainable and resource-heavy to produce, with large batch-to-batch variation. Cultured meat companies have been putting significant resources  into alternative growth media. After the creation of the cell lines, efforts to remove serum from the growth media are key to the advancement of cellular agriculture as fetal bovine serum has been the target of most criticisms of cellular agriculture and cultured meat production. It is likely that two different media formulations will be required for each cell type: a proliferation media, for growth, and a differentiation media, for maturation. Scaling technologies. As biotechnological processes are scaled, experiments start to become increasingly expensive, as bioreactors of increasing volume will have to be created. Each increase in size will require  a re-optimization of various parameters such as unit operations, fluid dynamics, mass transfer, and reaction kinetics. Scaffold materials. For cells to form tissue, it is helpful for a material scaffold to be added to provide structure. Scaffolds are crucial for cells to form tissues larger than 100 µm across. An ideal scaffold must be non-toxic for the cells, edible, and allow for the flow of nutrients and oxygen. It must also be cheap and easy to produce on a large scale without the need for animals. 3D tissue systems. The final phase for creating cultured meat involves bringing  together all the previous pieces of research to create large (>100 µm in diameter) pieces of tissue that can be made of mass-produced cells without the need for serum, where the scaffold is suitable for cells and humans. Applications. While the majority of discussion has been around food applications, particular cultured meat, cellular agriculture can be used to create any kind of agricultural product, including those that never involved animals to begin with, like Ginkgo Biowork's fragrances. Meat. In 2020, the world's first regulatory approval for a cultivated meat product was awarded by the Government of  Singapore. The chicken meat was grown in a bioreactor in a fluid of amino acids, sugar, and salt. The chicken nuggets food products are ~70% lab-grown meat, while the remainder is made from mung bean proteins and other ingredients. The company pledged to strive for price parity with premium "restaurant" chicken servings. Coffee. In 2021, media outlets reported that the world's first synthetic coffee products have been created by two biotechnology companies, still awaiting regulatory approvals for near-term commercialization. Such products – which can be produced via cellular agriculture in bioreactors and for which multiple companies' R&D have  acquired substantial funding – may have equal or highly similar effects, composition and taste as natural products but use less water, generate less carbon emissions, require less labor and cause no deforestation. Products that equal naturally grown coffee on the chemical molecular level technically wouldn't be "coffee substitutes" but differ only in their method of production – and hence be "lab-grown coffee". Organizations working on cellular coffee include: Fish. Cellular agriculture could be used for commercial fish feed. Academic programs. New Harvest Cultured Tissue Fellowship at Tufts University. A joint program between New Harvest and the Tissue Engineering Research Center  (TERC), an NIH-supported initiative established in 2004 to advance tissue engineering. The fellowship program offers funding for Masters and PhD students at Tufts university who are interested in bioengineering tunable structures, mechanics, and biology into 3D tissue systems related to their utility as foods. Conferences. New Harvest Conference. New Harvest brings together pioneers in the cellular agriculture and new, interested parties from industry and academia to share relevant learnings for cellular agriculture's path moving forward. The Conference has been held in San Francisco, California, Brooklyn, New York, and is currently held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The upcoming next edition  will take place July 10 and 11, 2020. Industrializing Cell-Based Meats & Seafood Summit. The 3rd Annual Industrializing Cell-Based Meats & Seafood Summit is the only industry-led forum uniting key decision-makers from biotech and food tech, leading food and meat companies, and investors to discuss key operational and technical challenges for the development of cell-based meats and seafood. As cellular agriculture companies prepare to scale production and go through the international regulatory approval process this is an annual event not to miss. The upcoming edition will take place in August 2021. International Scientific Conference on Cultured Meat . The International Scientific Conference on Cultured Meat began in collaboration with Maastricht University in 2015, and brings together an international group of scientists and industry experts to present the latest research and developments in cultured meat. It takes place annually in Maastricht, The Netherlands. Good Food Conference. The GFI conference is an event focused on accelerating the commercialization of plant-based and clean meat. Cultured Meat Symposium. The Cultured Meat Symposium is a conference held in Silicon Valley highlighting top industry insights of the clean meat revolution. Alternative Protein Show. The Alternative Protein Show is a "networking event" to facilitate  collaboration in the "New Protein Landscape," which includes plant-based and cellular agriculture. New Food Conference. The New Food Conference is an industry-oriented event that aims to accelerate and empower innovative alternatives to animal products by bringing together key stakeholders. It is Europe's first and biggest conference on new-protein solutions.