Everybody’s gotta eat. The keynote presentation at this year’s Vermont Tech Jam focuses on a new way to feed people — by growing meat in a lab instead of raising and killing animals.
Proponents of “cellular agriculture” point out that the world’s population is rising fast — according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s World Population Clock, there are now more than 8 billion of us on the planet. Also rising: meat consumption and production. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations show that carnivory has more than tripled over the past 50 years.
That adds up to the annual slaughter of 80 billion animals.
More and more land and water are required to raise them, and the result is increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Cell-cultivated, no-slaughter meat offers a possible alternative.
Although you can’t yet find such a thing on grocery store shelves, in July, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration approved the production and sale of cell-cultured chicken. Two restaurants in the country are already serving it. The Good Food Institute reports that worldwide investment in cultivated meat companies in the past five years totaled more than $2.5 billion.
The race is on to make the production of lab-grown meat efficient, affordable and scalable. Hundreds of researchers in the U.S. are working to achieve those goals — including Vermont Tech Jam’s keynote speakers, Dr. Rachael Floreani and Irfan Tahir.
Dr. Floreani is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Vermont with a background in biotech. Her research has yielded six granted patents, more than 40 scientific articles and an FDA-approved implant available on the market.
A vegan, PhD candidate Tahir is a passionate cellular agriculture advocate — he founded UVM’s Cellular Agriculture Club and even has a “CELL AG” vanity license plate on his car. His research is funded by New Harvest, a nonprofit cellular agriculture research institute.
In 2020, Tahir suggested that Floreani’s lab adapt its biomaterials work to the production of cell-cultivated meat. Her lab was able to produce a type of scaffolding that meat cells adhere to as they multiply. She eventually decided to apply for a patent to commercialize that innovation. Her new company, Burlington Bio, is one of more than 150 companies in the U.S. working in this field. As of October 1, it’s headquartered at Hula.
At the Vermont Tech Jam on Saturday, October 21 at 3 p.m., Floreani and Tahir explain how cultivated meat is made and the opportunities and challenges it presents for Vermont.
Related
Lab-Grown Meat Could Help Feed a Climate-Changed World. Newly Launched Burlington Bio Hopes to Take a Bite.
Food writer Melissa Pasanen talked with Floreani and Tahir for her cover story on cultivated meat in this week’s special Tech Issue of Seven Days. In it, Floreani asked a provocative question: “Vermont’s known as a food state. We have agriculture ingrained in our society. If the world is going to move away from traditional agriculture, shouldn’t Vermont be a part of that?”
This article appears in 2023 Vermont Tech Jam Program Guide.