Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI)
Cultured meat:
Analogizing the production process
Designed by Kelli Cromsigt
CC-BY The Good Food Institute
CMSI Phase 3 Working Sessions: Developing an Action Plan for Cultured Meat Safety Research (Jan 2024 – present)
Vireo Advisors and New Harvest are hosting a series of working sessions in 2024-2025 to initiate research collaborations to address cell-cultured meat and seafood safety priorities, previously outlined in CMSI Phase 1 and Phase 2. Working sessions are convening global experts and researchers in food safety, toxicology, biomanufacturing, cell biology, food science, and other related fields who are interested in actively working on or advising cell-cultured meat and seafood safety research. Funding for this working session series is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA).* In-kind support is generously provided by the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture, the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), Wildtype, and the University of California Davis Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein (iCAMP). Thanks to those who participated in our December 2024 working session in Austin, Texas!
Apply here for our March 2025 working session. Additional dates and locations will be announced soon. To indicate interest in attending a future session, fill out this form. For any questions or suggestions, reach out to CMSI@VireoAdvisors.com.
Ongoing Projects
Safety Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) List (May 2024 – present)
Vireo Advisors is partnering with the Good Food Institute APAC and Singapore FRESH at National Technical University to develop a Safety Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) List of commonly used media ingredients for cultured meat and seafood. The list includes nutrients that animals and fish produce and consume, such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and growth factors, and a safety assessment independent of regulatory considerations intended to be harmonized across regions as a first-level screening to reduce the level of effort for companies and regulatory reviewers. The SAMI list also aims to help companies screen products for residue levels of these ingredients in media formulations without having to undergo a new assessment and approval process.
Methods Development for Measuring Growth Factors (October 2023 - present)
Growth factors are a key input in cultured meat production due to their roles in controlling cell proliferation and differentiation. Currently, the lack of standardized methods for measuring growth factors slows safety demonstration and regulatory review. Vireo Advisors is collaborating with Multus, Aberytswyth University in Wales, Extracellular, and the British Standards Institute to develop and validate analytical methods for reliably measuring growth factors that can be used to estimate exposure levels when consumed in cultured meat and seafood products.
Creating a Protein Thermostability Dataset to Accelerate Cultured Meat and Seafood Development (January 2025 – present)
Vireo Advisors is working with New Harvest, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and Defined Bioscience to create an open-source, curated dataset that incorporates direct measurements of growth factor thermostability. We are aggregating protein thermostability data from the public domain and generating in vitro and in silico data on growth factor thermostability. Data will be processed for compatibility with AI/ML workflows and released in an open-source format, facilitating field-wide data-sharing and providing a foundation for developing AI/ML models for growth factor thermostability to understand the safety of their use in the production of cultured meat. Funding for this work is provided by Food Systems Innovation.