Australia's Cultivated Meat

Welcome back Food Junglers. Our bioeconomy enthusiast, Eshan Samaranayake, is back to give us a snapshot of a conversation he had with James Ryall, former Chief Scientific Officer (“CSO”) at cultivated meat company, Vow.

James is now a consultant for small and medium-sized businesses in the biomanufacturing space and talks here about the future and the biggest challenges cultivated meat will face. Let’s dig in.

In 2019, James transitioned from a two-decade academic career to join Australia-based Vow, which marked his first foray into the biomanufacturing industry. As the CSO, James was pivotal in scaling Vow from a team of just three (the two co-founders and a junior scientist) to a leading innovator in the cultivated meat industry with over eighty employees.

"Those initial days were a whirlwind of establishing lab protocols, mentoring junior researchers, and navigating the dual challenges of a startup environment and fatherhood during a global pandemic," James recalled. “The first 12 to 18 months were intense yet exhilarating, marked by daily problem-solving, strategic hires, and laying the groundwork for what Vow would become”, he added.

Over the course of several months, Vow expanded significantly thanks to the collective efforts of the co-founders, Tim Noakesmith and George Peppou, and the rest of the team. The startup established a dedicated R&D lab and two manufacturing facilities with James even helping to produce the mammoth meatball, seen on Stephen Colbert.

Cultivated meat in Australia.

Since leaving Vow at the end of 2023 James has focused his efforts on providing consulting services for developing companies in the biomanufacturing space.

And, at the moment, he’s hoping for cultivated meat to receive regulatory approval by the end of the year in Australia and New Zealand. If successful, Australia, along with New Zealand, would become the fourth global jurisdiction to declare cultivated meat safe and approve its sale to consumers.

On top of this, James is excited by the range of consulting services in Australia that are working to help develop the cultivated meat market. Non-profit organisations, like Food Frontier and Cellular Agriculture Australia, for instance, work hard to provide resources, market analysis and policy advocacy to help get cultivated meat approved in both Australia and New Zealand.

It’s safe to say that James is feeling quite positive about the development of cultivated meat, especially after speaking with so many Business-2-Business companies (“B2B”).

In a recent LinkedIn post on the topic he wrote, ”Consider the new cultured meat startups today and the immense advantage they hold. Even just five years ago, the infrastructure to support this industry was practically non-existent. Companies had to build everything from scratch - cell lines, media, bioprocesses, you name it. And whatever infrastructure or B2B components that did exist were designed for biopharma, meaning they were prohibitively expensive. But let’s look at the situation for a B2C cultured meat company starting in 2024. They can purchase or license almost all of the building blocks needed to start producing prototypes from day one.”

Cultivated meat is slowly receiving all the building blocks it needs to thrive - from expert research to machinery - where, five years ago, that wasn’t possible. This diversification helps build a more resilient biomanufacturing ecosystem capable of addressing a wide range of industrial needs and driving innovation across multiple domains.

One of the things that remain, potentially, is to build an academic centre dedicated to cultured meat or cellular agriculture research in Australia. James highlighted the success of institutions like Tufts University under the guidance of Prof. David Kaplan as a model for what could be achieved.

An untapped area in cultivated meat.

James believes that the sensory profile of individual cell types is a promising yet largely untapped area when it comes to producing cultivated-meat.

"We currently have advanced technologies to analyze genomes, epigenomes, transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes, lipidomes, and more," he explains. "However, the potential for 'flavor-omics' and 'aroma-omics' dedicated to each cell type is immense and largely untapped."

James envisions a future where the sensory attributes of cultivated meat are optimised at the cellular level, offering precise control over flavour and aroma. This could change how we think about cell types as ingredients and it would enable the creation of food products with precise, tailored sensory profiles.

"This area (while niche!) holds tremendous promise for innovation and exploration," James said. He hopes that more entrepreneurs will look into this under-explored area.

Cultivated meat’s biggest challenges.

James identifies scaling up from pilot to manufacturing capacity as the primary hurdle for cultivated meat startups. This challenge is not unique to the cultivated meat sector and is a key issue in biomanufacturing broadly.

But, ever the optimist, James sees an opportunity. "Bioreactors, the backbone of biomanufacturing, have evolved gradually over the last 30 years," James explained. "Yet, to achieve the density and scale necessary to significantly reduce costs in sectors like food, textiles, cosmetics, and specialty chemicals, a revolution in bioreactor design and upstream bioprocessing is essential."

Ultimately, advances in scalable bioreactors will be crucial in overcoming current scaling challenges for cultivated meat.

Want to learn more about James?

Having chatted with James several times, I can personally attest to his eagerness to connect with others in the field, share insights, and foster collaborations. If you're interested, don't hesitate to reach out to him or check out his brand new website.