How collaboration on a safety initiative supports the growing cellular agriculture community

I am early, my brain aching for that first cup of coffee, since my hotel restaurant wasn’t open yet, and I am on Boston time. I don’t know yet who the thought leaders are, who the entrepreneurs are, who the investors are. No one there knows me, and I only have an hour or so to change that. I need coffee! As much as I hate to admit it, I am a bit stodgy. I start nearly every day with a cup of rich coffee lightened to a creamy brown with cow’s milk, preferably 2% fat and organic. So there I am, about to face a whole new crowd, desperately seeking cow’s milk for my coffee before the day-long workshop begins in the iconic Palace hotel in downtown San Francisco. I try to make a joke with the few others present of the fact that I really dislike the flavor of almond milk, without disclosing that I can’t digest soy milk. Do I lose that precious networking time to find animal milk? Or do I suck it up and put the watery almonds in my precious coffee?

I come with a message, that I can help the industry grow by creating a safety culture. But these are food entrepreneurs. They know they need to meet safety standards. But these standards do not exist for the cellular agriculture sector. It is like 1975 before the Asilomar Conference for recombinant DNA technology.

It is so early, there were only two other people there not volunteering for the conference. They are wearing jackets, but not ties. I introduce myself, unsure whether to make a joke about my absolute panic over no cow’s milk. Vince Sewalt, as it turns out, has been a pioneer in fermented proteins for decades, and is a conference and industry VIP. I learn in the first few minutes that he is in fact among the well-established movers and shakers I traveled to this conference hoping to meet. He seems to be receptive to my message of proactive collaboration about safety. But, without a proper coffee in me (that almond milk is so sweet!), I can’t really judge if I am on target, he clearly has strong opinions about how to proceed on safety. Over the next two days, I keep returning to have more discussions with Vince to see if my ideas resonate, and if he can help me organize a safety initiative.

It is the next day, after three or so panels of speakers –leaders in their own right from large companies seeking to align, writers, investors, storytellers, and entrepreneurs. We adjourn for the product tasting, and I find Vince near the Just Egg booth. It’s hard to get his attention because the line for tasting the eggs is long, and then recipients stand just off to the side to taste them. He and I are on opposite sides of the line. So, I eat my ‘eggs’ with a vegan who is so excited to have discovered the product, while I secretly make a face because although they have the perfect texture of eggs, I am eating with a wooden fork that makes my tongue recoil as if I am at the doctor’s office saying ‘ahh’. Finally, the line dissipates and I approach Vince once again. I’ve met some great folks, but he is the most senior and most receptive to working on a safety collaboration, and I am heading to the airport before lunch, so I can stop at home and shave off three time zones before jetting off to Paris for an OECD workshop.

I muster the courage to ask, “Vince, do you think we could collaborate on a safety initiative for cellular agriculture”? I lay out the whole idea as if in an elevator, dumping way too many details of my idea before he has time to respond. He tells me that yes, it’s a good idea and we should discuss it with Isha Datar at New Harvest — she would be receptive to the idea. Just at that moment, Meera Zassenhaus walks by. Vince introduces us — she is from New Harvest. It is one of those moments where the future peeks through. But then, it is time to go back and hear more “fireside chats.”

Isha is that rare leader who has set her sights far into the future and is grounded by the steps we all must take to get there. She is immediately receptive to our proposal for a safety workshop. This is before, before the shutdowns and rapid growth curves and sealed borders and everyone who can is working from home. Before conferences became virtual. So in the course of scoping our workshop in the spring, it became virtual. It becomes a collaborative, distinctive event through the expertise of Allen Gunn of Aspiration Tech to organize the focused, inclusive community building online forum.

While Kim and others at Vireo prepared issue papers as subject matter for the workshops, Isha was doing the extensive outreach that led to nearly 50 companies joining the safety initiative. Vince quietly steered the narrative to one industry that would be receptive to it. Jeremiah reliably weighed in to clarify complex technical concepts while Paige kept us moving and Meera organized the communications, among others in the background.

The New Harvest/Vireo Advisors safety collaboration took a first look at identifying and characterizing cell ag safety research needs independent of regulatory considerations that will benefit the entire sector with methods and data needed to demonstrate safety. By first developing a model process diagram and then stepping through it, we were able to identify potential hazards at each step, and then analyze them for issues that might affect the final products to see if there are knowledge gaps that could benefit from research. Industry participants validated the process diagram components, puzzle pieces designed to be customized to reflect individual technologies. The result is a set of research needs to fill current gaps that have been prioritized by industry participants in the initiative in terms of their questions about safety.

As with the 1975 Asilomar Conference, which sought to establish principles for addressing potential biohazards under uncertainty at the beginning of recombinant DNA technologies, for cell ag technologies the standards of protection should be greater in the beginning and modified as potential hazards become better established. There is a wide recognition that some current concerns are likely to be unwarranted, but will still benefit from research to investigate them as a way to decrease uncertainty.

As I reflect on this effort over my coffee with 2% cow’s milk, I am amazed at how successfully we engaged with 49 companies, as well as some outreach with regulatory scientists, with whom we previously had not collaborated or, in some cases, ever met. Doing so in these unprecedented times when many of us have turned our homes into workspaces to decrease the risks from the global COVID-19 pandemic is a testament to the power of collaboration.