Changing the future of meat production

An interview with Apeksha Goswami

ByTaliBloomfield

Humans for Earth had the privilege of interviewing

Apeksha Goswami, an upand-coming scientist in the field of Cellular Agriculture (cellAG). This is a relatively new field, with discoveries and advancements being made constantly and a need for more committed minds to help solve its pressing issues.

Apeksha is currently a PhD candidate with Prof Johannes le Coutre at UNSW focussed on designing a cell media that is not reliant on animals to make the cultivated meat much more sustainable and cruelty-free.

She has published several pieces of scientific literature surrounding her masters research in biotechnology and microbiology. Read on to know more about her 2/5/2023

Q: Apeksha, as a PhD candidate studying cellular agriculture (cellAG), could you break down what your research involves?

A: Cellular agriculture is a relatively new field and so there is a lot of potential for new discoveries and breakthroughs. My PhD involves looking into how to grow and nourish cells outside of the animal body in a sustainable way. That is, creating an enriched media that is ethical, sustainable and crueltyfree. The ultimate goal is to break new ground and contribute to creating labgrown meat that reduces animal cruelty and environmental harm. Creating cultured meat is a complicated process, however, the main components are as follows:

1.A biopsy (a small sample of cells) from a live animal is required.

2. The sample is then cultured in a bioreactor, which basically provides the perfect conditions for the small sample of cells to turn into a big sample of cells. To reach a suitable production volume, a specific media to feed the development is used.

3. For the creation of threedimensionality and texture, a bioscaffold is incorporated at some point during the process. This gives structure to the growing tissue. 2/5/2023

UNSW laboratory where Apeksha completes most of her practical research. The lab is run by Prof Johannes le Coutre in the Chemical Engineering building. Images sourced from le Coutre lab, UNSW, 2022.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your background and what inspired you to decide to pursue research in this space?

A: I think I’ve always been enthusiastic about research and making discoveries. I first became interested in learning more about tissue culture during my master's degree in India. This interest led me to join UNSW for a 2-year master’s by research course where I studied a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in gastric cancer patients. This challenged and inspired me and gave me a chance to do some original research and eventually led me to start my PhD.

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Q: What is the biggest obstacle you have faced so far in your research? What motivated you to overcome this?

A: My biggest obstacle so far was COVID. The pandemic stalled my research the minute I started. It made designing experiments and getting preliminary results difficult as I had minimal access to the lab. However, there was a silver lining as these restrictions gave me time to focus on reading and researching literature and having discussions online with my supervisors, giving me a strong knowledge base before I started the practical experiment part of my PhD.

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Q: Many of us know how huge of a carbon footprint modern food production techniques can have. How is the field of cellular agriculture finding solutions to combat major environmental issues such as increased greenhouse gases?

A: Sustainable food should meet the need of the current population without compromising future generations. Cultured meat could meet the growing demand of 10 billion people by 2050 and it can have a positive impact on global hunger and climate.

Research has shown that that 95% of the land and 78% of water currently used for agriculture can be freed and global warming could be reduced by 92%. We also know transportation of food accounts for 41% of total global food emissions.

Additionally, I believe that cellAG will run entirely in closed systems. This means we will be able to monitor and control the material input and output. Even parameters like energy consumption can be monitored.

It is worthwhile mentioning that the entire field sets out in terms of sustainability. And that differs it from the traditional tech that has been established as the gold standard.

Q: Are the types of products you can manufacture through labcultured meat similar to the ones we see in the shops today?

A: Yes, that is the intent. However, there is the time required to make this happen. If you look at it genetically, cultured meat is identical to conventional meat at the cellular level.

If you give it a fresh view cell has the potential to provide a much broader spectrum of products than the products we are currently accustomed to.

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Q: As I understand finding a substitute for foetal bovine serum (FBS) has been a huge obstacle in creating lab-cultured meat that is fully cruelty-free and economically viable. Would you be able to explain to our readers what actually FBS is and a bit about why it is so important researchers like you find an alternative?

If we want to produce slaughter free or animal free meat, we cannot rely on FBS to nourish the cells. Creating a ‘clean’ ‘cruelty free’ meat, must be free of FBS, and that is what my research is focussed on. This is important not only for animal welfare but also for controlling production costs. Using, FBS drives up the cost of cultured meat as it costs around $500 USD per litre, making it economically unsustainable for consumers. 2/5/2023

A: FBS is derived from the blood of a dairy cow foetus when it is being slaughtered. Cows are deliberately impregnated to harvest this blood. FBS is currently a key element of traditional cell culture supplementing the media with essential nutrients proteins and fats. However, the use of FBS in producing lab-cultured meat almost entirely negates its proposed benefits and remains a significant roadblock to culturing meat at a factory scale.

Q: How do you hope your research will shape the future? Do you hope lab-cultured meat will mostly replace farmed meat or just become another option for consumers?

A: I am quite confident that we are making strides towards creating an affordable and sustainable alternative to farmed meat. In the near future, I see cell-based meat products coexisting with plant-based and farmed meat. We hope in the long term, as our science and knowledge progress that the products we create will be more attractive to the consumer both on a moral and taste basis.

Q: To wrap the interview do you have a piece of advice or a personal message you'd like to leave with the readers?

A: History shows there are good times and bad times, and science has always been a guiding factor in finding solutions. The enthusiasm behind this technology is credible and it is very important that it gets the push of finances, research and implementation. This technology will thoroughly raise the bar for hygiene, food safety and animal welfare as compared to conventional animal-based meat. I hope to see more researchers join this field and contribute in taking it to the next level.

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ByViolaineGabriel

Humans For Earth had the opportunity to chat with Michellee Fox, an inspiring farmer and chef base in Tonasket, Washington (US), who aims to rewrite the story of food. She touches upon several topics ranging from growing sustainable food to the importance of eating what is in season, connecting with farmers and learning from chefs.

Michellee Fox is a world-renowned sustainable chef, a visionary food system game changer, a regenerative farmer, and the Food & Nutrition manager at the Okanogan County Community Action Council. With over 15 years of experience in culinary and event management, she successfully created 2 major festivals in Northern California. She is the host of CraftFood Podcast, where she interviews leaders in nutritional sustainability and works with the United Nations to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.

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Q: How did you develop your passion to make our world more sustainable about what we eat and the way we grow food?

M: It all started in Brazil. My grandmother was someone who could barely read, and she was about 65 when she started learning how to write. But at the same time, every time she would prepare food for the week, she would just, in her small way, be like ‘we already ate purple vegetables this week, now we need to eat green vegetables and now orange vegetables’. She brought up that feeling of being able to eat the rainbow and paying attention to what you eat. This is on the nutrition side of things, but then she would also do things like saving all the coffee grounds and putting them in her roses. So, there was a lot of doing the most that you can with the little that you have.

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The next step for me was to develop that feeling of awareness. So, I moved from California to Tonasket, Washington, where I now live on a farm, 80 acres in the middle of nowhere. We have no garbage service or anything like that, we have to pack our garbage into a shed and from there we put it in a truck, and we take it to the station. And I realized there how much garbage we make in our society. I thus started doing things like saving tortilla bags to use as Ziploc bags. And then with all of that, I started paying attention to how chefs don't necessarily think of what's in season or what's around them. Sometimes you have a fancy chef cooking with strawberries in New York in the middle of the winter, and that strawberry must have travelled thousands of miles from Peru or something. If we don't pay attention to these things, I think that that's when we are kind of crumbling as a society

, and I think that Covid has really shown how the system can break. You know, you couldn’t find toilet paper and you couldn't find rice and people started thinking ‘where does the food come from’? And I think that was a really good time to start having that conversation louder and remind everyone that, yes, you can make a little tiny garden even if you live in an apartment in New York and you can have a little window seal and you can grow some cilantro. 2/5/2023

I think overall the message is to watch and pay attention on our place in society, but also paying attention on how much we use and take from the earth and try to figure out ways to give it back.

Q: You mentioned how people get used to buying processed food because it is convenient. How do you make people more aware of what they eat and encourage them to change their habits? And how do you do this without telling people that what they do is the ‘wrong’ thing?

M: I think that each person is different. Someone might be a woman with three kids and a full-time job, and you cannot expect her to grow a garden and process the garden, it's impossible. But I think that it's important to create a connection with the people around you.

So, if you live in a city, go to the farmer's market, meet a farmer, and you can say ‘Hey, I write articles -or I'm really good with social media- maybe we can trade a box of apples for a couple of posts I can make for you’. Really, I think the connection is what we're missing more. Covid also has messed that up for everyone, we are even more apart from each other.

So, create a connection and try to figure out what is easier for you and also figure out tricks like the one I said about the tortilla bags earlier

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If you eat tortillas, why throw that bag away when you could just save and use it as a Ziploc bag instead? There are things that we can all do because they're easy, but there are also more difficult things. But I think that's important to try and figure it out. For example, what is in your family that you use the most? Let's say you drink mint tea, and you buy that little box every single week because that's what you need, maybe you can find a farmer who grows mint and you can buy a bunch of it, and then you will stop using these little boxes every week. These are small steps you can take instead of being overwhelmed and feeling like you must be zero waste. Just start small, start with one thing and hopefully you catch the bug and start doing more and more things. So, I think it is important to start slow and make a connection with people around you that do things that are different and see how you can trade and barter.

V: I guess it is just a question of habits and once you start with one thing, you realise that it's actually not that hard to make changes from here.

M: Exactly. Sometimes you feel like it's cheaper to go buy a box of things, a bag of things or a can of things, but in reality, you spend time doing those things. It is cheaper to buy the actual ingredient and cook, but some people just don't have the time. If you, for example, love chili, you can make a few batches of chili and freeze them and when you're eating the fifth time months later, you realise you haven't spent money in chili for so long and that can change your mindset and give you that desire to make changes. Each person has a different drive, so it is about what drives you to do better.2/5/2023

V: I guess it’s all about realizing what is easier for you?

M: Yes, and what are your priorities? For example, if you really love salad, maybe you can just buy some tomatoes and some cucumbers and with all of that and you can prep within like half an hour and make salad for an entire week. It will also be way more delicious. Because I don't think we touched on this, but I wish everyone knew what happens when you buy tomatoes out of season; you're buying a tomato that travelled thousands of miles, the tomato came out of the vine, it was green, it got sprayed with all kinds of things to stay green. By the time you're actually paying for that tomato, that tomato has no nutritional value anymore and, really, you are just spending money for an empty gallery. So, I always say the easiest thing to do is try to eat what is in season in your area. Not only will the food you make be better, but you will also save money because you have so much of that specific vegetable at the time it is in season.

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Q: On eating what is in season, do you think restaurants should be more open about the ingredients they use and where they come from? And should restaurants make their customers aware of what is in season to help people get into that mindset?

M: Yes. I think that chefs are the teachers of the culinary world. But somehow, we forgot that a little. We're now more thinking of how much butter we can put with an ingredient and make everyone like it. But in reality, we should be teaching people that we can make a beautiful dish out of what's available today. So as a chef, you should also consider yourself as a teacher; a teacher on how to eat better and how to feel better. Because sometimes you go to a restaurant and you think what you ate was delicious, but there was a pound of butter in there and two hours later, you don't feel so great. And then there are times when you eat something, and you feel invigorated. It's because that food is actually giving you what you need.

Another thing is that the earth is really smart. Whatever is in season for that season is what you are supposed to be eating. For example, all the dark leafy vegetables only grow in winter. This is simply because all those have all the vitamin C and other vitamins that you actually need for the winter. So, listening to the earth and seeing what the farmers are producing today is really important.

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Q: As our food is mainly produced through the work of farmers, how do you think we can make farming part of the solution rather than part of the problem (problem in the sense of land fragmentation, use of pesticides and greenhouse gases release)? How can we reduce industrial farming, which is hurtful to our planet and instead promote local minority farmers?

M: I think that for the last 50 years, the middleman, which is that guy who grabs and transports the tomato got a bigger role every year. For that person, which is the middleman, the further the product goes, the better for him and the more money he makes. And I think that, overall, this is the main problem. Farmers try to get bigger because the only way they can survive is by getting more money.

One thing is that, without farmers, there's no food. So, what I would say to farmers out there, instead of trying to make it bigger, just try to be broader with what you grow instead of just growing tomatoes or just apples, for example. Just try to grow a bunch of things, so then you always have something that somebody wants. I also believe that until the day farmers are selling us ingredients, they're never going to make it

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They need to sell us products. So, if you're a farmer, try to link up with a commercial kitchen somewhere and try to make things like a tomato sauce and create your little brand. By trying to sell it this way, you are going to make so much more money as a farmer. More than if you’re just selling tomatoes. Try to make your agriculture more meaningful. As a farmer you can join farmers associations and then talk to schools and food assistants, for example. And then you can sell to everybody around you instead of having to put it on a truck and drive across the country. From the buyer’s perspective, try make your circle to be smaller. Again, just find the farmers that are close to you and try to purchase from them.

V: Yes, I see. I guess that’s how you start building a community and connecting with people around you as well which is important as people tend to forget that there is a farmer behind what they eat.

M: Exactly. For chefs in general, I say get out of your white tablecloth and fancy restaurant, this little world that you live in. Go to schools, prisons, food assistance, which is when people don't have food to eat. Go to those places and volunteer and share your skills with other people. That so you can actually teach people how to eat better, and then when you're doing that, you can connect a farmer with it. You then have a little group of people that are bringing a better value to these normal entities that we just don't even think about.

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As a buyer, pay attention to where your food comes from. Google tells you everything these days; put your town in there and then research what is growing around you and who is growing it. How many farms are they around you? Start connecting. Put a farmer and a chef together, organize events within your community such as school lunch, to build a better and stronger system where we can eat better.

Q: Now on your approach to farming, can you explain more about your farming techniques (e.g., Korean natural farming)?

M: I'll give the best example to explain if somebody has never heard of Korean farming. In the forest, things just happen, the forest doesn't need pesticides or anything else, the forest does it on itself. So, what happens is everything falls from the top into the ground and then the microbes eat it, and then the plants eat it, and then they use it again. Korean farming is based on the same idea. For example, if you want your vegetables or your flowers to flour, you can look in your cabinet and let’s say, you have all these bananas that are going bad. You can just use the rotten bananas with sugar and water, let the mixture ferment and you can simply feed that back to the plant. Because it has everything it needs in that banana, everything inside of the banana is saying ‘we're going to die, we need to flower’. So, it has all the components to grow other things. Another example is after you drink your coffee, and you have powder left.

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Well, this is pure nitrogen, and it is exactly what plants need to grow. What about eggs? Everybody eats eggs, right? You get those eggshells; you dry them off, grind them up and you sprinkle that on the plants. That is calcium. Now banana peels: straight potassium, mix them with sugar and water and feed it to your plants and they’ll grow. So, Korean farming is just a way to mimic the forest and create natural and homemade fertilizers with what you already have at home, like my grandmother did, no need to go to a single store. In this way, you can feed your plants and make your soil alive. 2/5/2023

Q: What are you most proud of in terms of what you have achieved so far in your career/life and what are your next steps/projects in making our world more sustainable?

M: I think the thing I'm most proud of is that I was able to get over my ego and get out of the big city and cook for rich people. I was able to move to the middle of nowhere and find a job where I am now responsible for an entire county food assistance program, and I use my years of culinary to be able to feed the people in need. You don't have to be a chef or a cook that only works at a restaurant, you can use all your skill in hospitals, schools, prisons, and in so many places where they need people to know how to cook.

For the future, the thing I'm most excited about is we are building a 26, 000 square foot building. It will be our new house for the Okanagan County Community Action and in there I'm going to have a commercial/training facility, a drive-through healthy, affordable cafe with a pay forward system, which means, if someone comes through and has all the money in the world, they pay $6 for the sandwich. Let’s say John Doe comes after them but he has no money, well the $6 paid for his sandwich. So, it's not for profit, but it's to feed everyone. And then the most exciting part of it for me is that we are going to do the very first industrial processing and packaging facility, which means anytime fruit and vegetables get left behind 2/5/2023 on the farm because they're not good enough, we’ll be able to pay the farmer for that, take it and process it into the ready-to-eat sauce, for example, and sell it back into the schools, into the food assistance and all that. That's something that has never been done, so it’s the very first time. It is all about trying to figure out how to feed ourselves, instead of waiting for food to magically happen.

Q: To wrap up the interview, do you have a message or a piece of advice you’d like to share with your readers?

M: As I said before if I can recommend anything is to look out from the little square you live in and see how you can be a part of society, not necessarily for money, but to make it into a better world. Figure out what skill you can share and trade with people so then you can make a stronger community around you.

I think we are in the days where we can just do it all ourselves, where we don't need that many people. But I think that sense of community is really important to move forward. Also, making sure that we're self-sufficient because someday, maybe that truck of food that shows up from who knows where may not show up anymore. What if the food does not show up anymore? How would you mobilize the people around you if you needed to figure it out yourselves? We're pretty resilient as human beings. I'm pretty sure we'll figure it out.

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