New Harvest
Formation2004
FounderJason Matheny
Legal status501(c)(3) nonprofit
PurposeResearch Institute
Executive Director
Isha Datar
Scott Banister, Karien Bezuidenhout, Vince Sewalt, John Pattison, Andras Forgacs
Websitewww.new-harvest.org

New Harvest is a donor-funded research institute dedicated to the field of cellular agriculture, focusing on advances in scientific research efforts surrounding cultured animal products.[1][2] Its research aims to resolve growing environmental and ethical concerns associated with industrial livestock production.[3]

The 501(c)(3) nonprofit was established in 2004 and is the longest running cellular agriculture-based organization. New Harvest funds university-based research to develop breakthroughs in cellular agriculture, such as new culture media formulations, bioreactors, and methods of tissue assembly for the production of cultured meat. It also organizes annual conference where it connects scientists, entrepreneurs, and other interested parties in the biosciences and food security fields.

History

In 2004, New Harvest was co-founded by Johns Hopkins researcher Jason Matheny to fund academic research into the use of cell cultures, instead of live animals, to grow meat.[4][5] Matheny became interested in cultured meat after researching infectious diseases (HIV prevention) in India for a master's degree in public health.[4] In the course of his research, he toured a poultry farm outside Delhi where he saw "tens of thousands of chickens in a metal warehouse, doped with drugs, living in their own manure and being bred for production traits that caused them to be immune-compromised."[6] He said the experience made him recognize the need for a new way to meet a global demand for meat that is "exponentially growing" in even a traditionally vegetarian country like India.

When Matheny returned to the States, he read about a NASA-funded project that "grew" goldfish meat to explore food possibilities for astronauts on long-range space missions.[4][7] He contacted several of the cited authors[4] and teamed up with three—a tissue engineer, cell biologist and animal scientist—to consider the viability of producing cultured meat on a large scale. In 2005, their research was published in the journal Tissue Engineering which generated considerable public and scientific interest in New Harvest. Despite many efforts in helping organize European conferences and events to raise awareness about cultured meat and attract investors, Matheny made little progress as he was running the organization alone.[8] However, when Canadian molecular and cell biology student Isha Datar published a paper about the possibilities of cultured meat and sent it to him for feedback, Matheny hired her, and in 2012 appointed her as executive director of New Harvest.[8]

After Datar's appointment, New Harvest's focus grew to include other animal commodities like milk and eggs, that could be produced by biotechnology rather than livestock. Since 2014, New Harvest has helped found two start-up companies—Perfect Day and The EVERY Company—created new grant programs, and shifted from their animal rights roots to a more sustainability-based outlook. Isha Datar coined the term "cellular agriculture" (often shortened to "cell ag") in a New Harvest Facebook group in 2015.[9][10]

Research

Fellowship Program

New Harvest's Fellowship Program funds graduate and postdoctoral Fellows participating in cellular agriculture research. Since its establishment in 2015, New Harvest Fellows spanning six countries have been responsible for most of the organization's research output. Projects have ranged from development of serum-free growth medium to bioreactor design to establishment of new cell lines. A number of New Harvest Fellows have been involved in the establishment of new cellular agriculture startups, such as Daan Luining and Mark Kotter who co-founded Meatable.[11]

Seed Grant Program

Seed Grants are awarded by New Harvest to short-term cellular agriculture projects. Grantees are typically at the undergraduate level, with projects lasting three to six months. One example of a project it supported was the development of the world's first cultured hamburger by Mark Post's Maastricht University team.[4]

Dissertation Award

Dissertation Awards are given by New Harvest to graduate students in their final year of study.[12] New Harvest's first Dissertation Award was given to Mike McLellan in early 2020.[12]

Conference

The annual New Harvest Conference is the first and oldest cellular agriculture conference.[8]: 63  It was first held in 2016 with the intention of bringing together the top innovators in cellular agriculture.[13] Originally called Experience Cellular Agriculture[8]: 63  and attended by primarily company founders, its audience has grown to include researchers, students, and investors as well.[13] Conference speakers are largely drawn from the New Harvest Fellows, startup founders, and investment firms looking to branch into cellular agriculture, speaking on research advancements, industry challenges, and the progression of cellular agriculture.[14] The New Harvest 2020 Conference was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[15]

Associated companies

Perfect Day

Isha Datar, Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya (two New Harvest volunteers) founded Muufri in 2014 to produce an animal-free cow's milk via biotechnology.[23] The start-up got seed funding from a synthetic biology accelerator program in Cork, Ireland. They tried to modify yeast to synthesize casein and whey, the two key proteins in milk.[24] Six months into research, Muufri received a $2M investment from Li-Ka-Shing's VC – Horizons Ventures.[25] Muufri has since re-branded to Perfect Day and has raised $61.5 million in VC funding since 2014.[26]

The EVERY Company

In 2015 Isha Datar, David Anchel, and Arturo Elizondo founded Clara Foods (now The EVERY Company) to develop a chickenless egg white.[27] The company participated in the Indie.Bio accelerator program in San Francisco, California.[28]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N Rosenberg (29 July 2021). "Man v food: is lab-grown meat really going to solve our nasty agriculture problem?". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  2. ↑ Jenny Splitter (11 July 2019). "The Name Game: Cultured Meat Could Suffer The Same Fate As GMOs, New Research Suggests". Forbes. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  3. ↑ Fiona MacKay (16 November 2009). "Looking for a Solution to Cows' Climate Problem". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Newton, David E. (2019). Vegetarianism and Veganism: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 196. ISBN 9781440867644. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  5. ↑ Alexis Madrigal (11 April 2008). "Scientists Flesh Out Plans to Grow". Wired. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  6. ↑ Roshan Mcarthur (14 June 2008). "Advertising feature: Biotechnology". New Scientist. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  7. ↑ Ian Sample (20 March 2002). "Fish fillets grow in tank". New Scientist. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Shapiro, Paul (2018). Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. Simon and Schuster. pp. 67–69. ISBN 9781501189104. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  9. ↑ Crosser, Nate (13 April 2021). "Cellular agriculture landscape". Fifth Industrial.
  10. ↑ "Useful Resources". Cellular Agriculture Australia.
  11. ↑ Till Behne (24 April 2021). "Delftse slimmeriken Daan en Krijn komen in 2025 met kweekvlees: 'We willen voorop lopen'". Algemeen Dagblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  12. 1 2 "New Harvest Grants First Dissertation Award". Protein Report. 31 July 2020. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  13. 1 2 "New Harvest 2016: Experience Cellular Agriculture". North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  14. ↑ Osborn, Annie (2 August 2019). "Hot New Biotech in a Toasty Old Town: New Harvest 2019 Conference in Cambridge, MA". The Good Food Institute. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  15. 1 2 "New Harvest 2020 Cancelled". New Harvest 2020 Cancelled. 17 March 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  16. ↑ Newman, Lenore (2020). "The Promise and Peril of "Cultured Meat"". Green Meat?: Sustaining Eaters Animals and the Planet. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 169–184. ISBN 9780228002710. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  17. ↑ Rosie Bosworth, Synthetic meats are on their way, and our farmers are going to be left behind, The Spinoff, 24 October 2017.
  18. ↑ New Harvest 2018 Conference. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  19. ↑ Chase Purdy, Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food (2020), p. 175.
  20. ↑ Kevin Melman (21 August 2019). "ICYMI: #NewHarvest2019 Recap". Medium. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  21. ↑ Marty McCarthy (29 July 2019). "Lab-grown meat industry start-ups join Australian market to tackle issue of mass production". ABC News. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  22. ↑ Joshua Peters (11 February 2020). "Did these scientists just create the first lab-grown human breast milk?". Massive Science. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  23. ↑ "Milk Grown in a Lab Is Humane and Sustainable. But Can It Catch On?". 23 October 2014. Archived from the original on October 25, 2014. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
  24. ↑ "Test tube milk the latest to hit the engineered food scene". www.gizmag.com. 27 October 2014. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
  25. ↑ Nguyen, Tuan C. (2014-07-21). "Animal lovers use biotech to develp [sic] milk made by man instead of a cow". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
  26. ↑ "Perfect Day for Cork as start-up raises $25m to develop cow-free milk". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
  27. ↑ "New Company Sets Out to Make Egg Whites Without the Chickens!". 27 May 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
  28. ↑ "Egg Whites, Rhino Horns, And Stem Cells: IndieBio's Plan To Bioengineer A Better World". 17 April 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-03.
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