Dr. Reza Ovissipour (left) and Dr. Faraz Harsini (right)
Newswise — If I told you about a burgeoning, economically promising industry that could safely and sustainably help feed a planet nearing 10 billion people, you’d want to see public investment researching how to scale this industry, right?
What if this industry will create millions of jobs and eliminate the need for antibiotics in our meat supply? Cultivated meat and seafood are not just emerging food products; they're at the forefront of some of the most innovative and exciting agricultural research. By blending food science, engineering, biochemistry, biotechnology, food safety, and nutrition, this field can cultivate animal cells into the same structure as conventional meat to create an identical product.
To learn more about the promising science and research happening in cultivated meat, I sat down with Dr. Reza Ovissipour, Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University and one of the world’s leading researchers in cultivated meat/seafood and food safety engineering.
Dr. Hasini: Can you provide an overview of your role and research at Texas A&M and what inspired you to get into this field?
Dr. Ovissipour: Overall, our mission is to address the food security challenges through innovative technologies, mainly focused on sustainable food production systems and cellular agriculture. In 2018, I decided to focus my research on cellular agriculture, which was a risky topic–even for the research community at that time–but I'm really happy with the decision. Receiving some funds from The Good Food Institute followed by a record-breaking grant from USDA actually helped develop my career and my research program. Now I have 15 team members, including PhD students, master students, and postdocs all contributing to this exciting research.
Dr. Hasini: From seed perfection to penicillin production, the USDA has been at the forefront of pioneering research that helps our farmers and improves our future. In addition to being one of the world’s leading experts in cultivated meat, you also help run the National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, which was created in 2021 thanks to a $10 million grant from the Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. How valuable is public investment for R&D from the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies for emerging technologies like cultivated meat?
Dr. Ovissipour: That Department of Agriculture grant was actually the largest federal grant for cellular agriculture in U.S. history. It was pivotal for cellular agriculture, supporting our program, students, and postdocs and allowing us to grow the field of cultivated meat and seafood.
With that funding, we can advance education, train the next generation of professionals, conduct public outreach, and work with industry and farmers—as well as do foundational research. We now have eight academic institutions across the country as part of the center, and we are seeing more agencies, such as DOD and DOE, begin to recognize the value of alternative proteins and cultivated meat.
Public funding of research is so important because it enables us to deepen our research and make sure that we are addressing, removing, and mitigating all of the risks associated with any emerging technologies. This funding allows us to address food safety, public health, public concerns, and consumer acceptance–all for the benefit of the American people.
Dr. Hasini: As a Texan myself, I admire your commitment to training the next generation of workers, especially at Texas A&M – a U.S. institution leading the world in agricultural research. What excited you most about the potential of alternative proteins for the U.S. economy and future workers?
Dr. Ovissipour: I am very passionate about training the next generation of workers. At Texas A&M, we train students, postdocs, and research scientists to be future leaders in the field. As you know, this field is very interdisciplinary, allowing us to attract students from different backgrounds and fields of study.
Research funding for cultivated meat has already created a lot of jobs across various sectors, including private R&D, production, distribution, and retail—beyond just scientific research like ours at A&M. Alternative proteins are a rapidly growing sector, and we have been working with both startup companies and large companies across the U.S. to support and enable their entrepreneurship. Year by year, I see better plant-based products on the shelf and better technologies used. This trend is attracting a significant amount of private investment and creating new business opportunities in the United States all across the supply chain, but it still requires open-sourced public investment like every other emerging industry to meet its promise.
Public funding for alternative protein is critical to ensure that the U.S. remains a leader in food innovation, helping to maintain our competitive edge in the global market. The United States is currently leading the cultivated meat and alternative protein sectors. Demand for alternative protein is growing internationally, and the United States can and should be a major player and exporter in the future for both economic and national security reasons.
Dr. Hasini: It seems like everything nowadays is becoming politicized and polarized—including foundational research into groundbreaking technologies. When you think about the research you and your team are undertaking, are you concerned with decision-makers telling you what you can and cannot research?
Dr. Ovissipour: In general, prohibiting or constricting research is very concerning–for everyone because it significantly hinders scientific and technological advancements and limits our ability to identify ways to improve our country, our lives, and the world. If we lost funding and support at Texas A&M, we would stop recruiting other researchers, students, and future experts. Then we would have to stop the research itself. Other countries that have been actively working on these topics would grow rapidly, and America would fall behind.
That's my major concern—that many industry and research jobs would go to other countries that are supporting their own proprietary research. Brain drain would be a real problem, with some of the pioneering countries benefiting in our absence being Singapore, Israel, some of the European countries, and perhaps most notably, China. Our country would lose many jobs, many students, and many programs. If we stop research, if we throw our hands up and decline to keep making our impact in the field, then in the next 10-20 years, we won't even have a presence on the global scene.
Dr. Hasini: Can you say more about how R&D leads to innovation and benefits in the private sector?
Dr. Ovissipour: Public funding is very important because it helps us to develop products and mitigate the risks associated with privately funded R&D and can significantly help with the commercialization of the broader industry. We also know how frequently public investment in research in certain sectors has unexpected and extraordinarily valuable spill-over effects across other sectors. So many of our research projects will eventually end up in the private sector, so we are trying to speed up the commercialization. As a result of this public investment, my team has been able to spin off startup companies and support other small and large companies that create manufacturing jobs and agricultural opportunities in rural and urban communities alike.
Dr. Hasini: Your background is originally in food safety and you just published an extensive food safety paper on cultivated meat. As a food safety expert, can you elaborate on the cultivated meat production process as just a new way of making the same product and its ability to address conventional food safety or nutrition concerns?
Dr. Ovissipour: Of course, any potential safety concerns with foods we eat and feed to our families are top of mind, regardless of how it’s produced or which innovative agricultural techniques are used. That is why I focus a lot on food safety and establishing safe production processes. Our food safety steps are very similar to that we use across all other food manufacturing.
As with any other food, there are potential concerns and potential risks associated with cross-contamination and allergens, but we address them. As you know, the growing threat of zoonotic diseases like the bird flu has taken a toll on the U.S. food system and consumer confidence, costing millions of dollars to mitigate. In many ways, we can actually eliminate many food safety concerns with cultivated meat, since we have better control over production, contamination, and mitigation methods for the viral infections, microbial infections, and other issues that food safety experts must address with conventional meat production.
Through these innovative technologies, we can also develop precision nutrition programs and address public health. We can better tailor products and enhance nutritional content by increasing protein or reducing saturated fat. Finally, I’d also note that emerging pandemics have always been a concern of mine. Having a controlled environment system for producing meat and seafood will significantly reduce the risks of future pandemics.
Supporting food innovators as a national priority
“Studies have shown that every dollar invested in agricultural research returns $20 to the economy.”—Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
I could never blame anyone, especially policymakers, for being curious about what we are putting into our bodies. The scientific evidence indicates that these products are safe and nutritious.
But if any questions remain, that is what academic research is for—addressing legitimate scientific concerns with the best available expertise. Politicizing research or choosing to block that research is shortsighted and simply counterintuitive.
Like Dr. Ovissipour, I am also an immigrant. I came to the United States because of the freedoms and opportunities that this country provided me for what I could research. In fact, it was my contribution to the national interest of the United States as a researcher that enabled me to become a permanent resident. I would be sad to see others lose that freedom to research, especially when it comes to something as important as food innovation.
As an investment, alternative proteins have already attracted millions in private funding from those who see its potential as a smarter use of finite resources. But it’s not nearly enough. For cultivated meat specifically, $3.1 billion in capital has been invested in all of human history, which has been spread across just over 100 companies. That’s less than the cost of one battery factory for electric vehicles, and it’s a tiny fraction of the $1.7 trillion that was invested in clean energy last year.
Federally supported innovation, in the form of increased investment in alternative protein R&D, can have a multiplier effect, leading to a more resilient food supply, more choices for consumers, climate-forward job creation, and a stronger economy. Specifically, governments should fund science to help create scientific innovation centers akin to what Dr. Ovissipour is building at Texas A&M.
With innovators like Dr. Ovissipour at the helm, it’s clear the United States can remain the global thought leader for alternative proteins and cultivated meat. We should ensure it stays that way by doing what America has always done–leveraging our uniquely entrepreneurial and innovating spirit to solve the most critical issues we face.
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