Dr. Dwayne Holmes of New Harvest

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Alex Shirazi: Thanks for joining us on the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast. I’m really excited to be here with Dr. Dwayne Holmes. Dwayne, welcome to the show.

Dwayne Holmes: Thanks for having me.

Alex Shirazi: I like to first jump into when we last met or when we last interacted. I think the last time we ran into each other was at ISCCM in Maastricht.

Is that right?

Dwayne Holmes: Yes. Yes.

Alex Shirazi: Okay, great. And, we’ll get back into that and like the conference series and, what you’re doing, cause you’re based actually in the Netherlands.

Dwayne Holmes: That’s correct. I’m in Harlem. So it’s just outside of Amsterdam.

Alex Shirazi: Okay, great. And are you from the Netherlands?

Dwayne Holmes: No, I’m originally from Chicago. But I came to the Netherlands to study and then stayed.

Alex Shirazi: Wow. Okay. You know what? I’m going to jump right into it and say, tell us a little bit about your background. What did you study? What was your research focus on and how did you get into the field of [00:01:00] cultured meat?

Dwayne Holmes: Yes. All right. So I came to the Netherlands to study molecular and stem cell biology. And that’s what I did. MSC, and then also PhD and. transfer from molecular to stem cell biology, but it stayed within the focus of neuroscience. So it was really, it was making models disease models for neurological diseases.

I’ll say childhood neurological diseases. But during that time, once you learn about stem cells, right? You can control the fate of cells, right? One identity to another including if you get into advanced stem cell work, induced pluripotency, stuff like this, you can really change things, right?

Then it became obvious to me, there are a lot of applications beyond even regenerative medicine. This is basically what it was for generative medicine. One of those being food, right? You could create, you can create muscles, [00:02:00] right? You can create fat. That’s a possible application. So I was always curious about this, even when I was in my graduate studies.

Although it was, the field was still very early and I’m like, okay, this is going to take a while. Then it was actually during my PhD work that there was the first tasting of a cultured meat burger. This was by Mark Post in England. Bobby, he’s from Maastricht, but it was held in England.

And I was like, Oh, wow. This is going a little bit faster than I expected. I really thought it was going to take a lot longer to take off. And so when I graduated with my PhD, I can sit while I had a lot of options, but I was like, maybe you should start my own company in cultured meat. I actually thought, okay this is a, an option.

But in the Netherlands there were already two startups. So there’s meatable and there was most of meat and I was like should I, actually try to You know raise money to become another [00:03:00] competitor in this small field or this small region Or

Alex Shirazi: you want to stay in the Netherlands?

Dwayne Holmes: I did want to stay in the Netherlands.

I wanted to stay in Europe but Netherlands, since I was already in Netherlands, it would be easier. And not to mention Netherlands is nice for biotechnology. So there’s a, it’s I would stay here if I was going to do that, but I was like, maybe I should join forces instead because these are still startups.

And I’d have something to offer. And there’s a little bit longer tale of how I went through this, but where I ended up was MosaMeet. And I was. head of quality assurance and regulatory work. So there’s I went in with the appeal of writing the first drastic see a for a culture Big Product, right?

And but there’s a lot more to it in it because, again, it’s quality assurance as well as regulatory, and you’re trying to set up the safety analytics and things like this. Ony was, so that for ice. started in the field. And then while I was there, I actually [00:04:00] became involved with New Harvest because they were doing their workshops with industry on safety of cultured meat.

And we were one of the ones that were involved. In fact, I ended up as an author, a coauthor on the paper that came out of that. So I was getting along very well with New Harvest, even while I was at Mozambique. And I also saw issues while I was in the field, or in the industry, I should say that I, that were concerning to me.

And I was like, I was seeing some Things that were slowing up progress to my mind. And so at some point I decided to leave MosaMeet and I actually went into consulting for a very brief amount of time, but it didn’t take long for a new harvest, specifically Isha the executive director to contact me.

Cause we had a good relationship. And she knew that, okay, it was starting and consulting, but I still had my eye on maybe starting my own company. I was like, okay, maybe I could do this. [00:05:00] And she said, so she, she knew that I had these issues, right? These things that I was seeing that were problematic in the field.

She’s I could become, yeah, I can start my own business and try to address those issues while being a competitor with everybody else. Or right. So entrepreneur. Trying to create a product while trying to solve these field wide issues, right? Or it could be an intrapreneur work in the non profit space and just Really address those issues right those field wide issues and that’s And at new harvest, it’s not just it’s cellular agriculture.

So it wasn’t just cultured meat. It’s also precision fermentation So I got to really work on field wide issues That I that had become a concern to me and I got to broaden. The You Technology so that I could address. So that was a definitely a winning pitch. And I moved to a new harvest. And in fact, I, so I helped them set up their entity in the Netherlands.

So I don’t know [00:06:00] how much was covered before when you’re talking to her, but there’s the U S entity and the Canadian one, and they didn’t have one in Europe. So it was also a good timing where I had left Mosa and I was in this stage of what can I do? And they wanted to have a foot. In Europe and it’s ah, okay.

Create an entity within Netherlands. So I helped them set it up and now I’m director of do harvest Netherlands.

Alex Shirazi: Wow. Okay. Very cool. And we’ll dive into a little bit more details there, but I’m really curious if you were to start a company in the field what kind of company, what would you be focusing on theoretically and, 

Dwayne Holmes: yeah,

Alex Shirazi: yeah,

Dwayne Holmes: so there’s so there’s a couple of ways to address cause there’s the technological, what are the Yeah, what are the technologies that I’d want to use versus what I’d like the products I’d want to try and create? Or what is the market that I would want to serve? I will, I’ll start with the technology.

The work that I was doing in regenerative medicine focused on pluripotent [00:07:00] stem cells. So it’s embryonic stem cells and what are called induced pluripotent stem cells. That’s basically you take. Whatever cell in the body you can get and you can turn it back into an embryonic stem cell like state So it’s basically like an embryonic stem cell and from there it has indefinite, proliferation growth and Can form any cell in the body, right?

So you really have this nice Their lines right which can create whatever you want and have these And again, the indefinite proliferation, indefinite growth makes them really nice compared to I’ll give an example of most of meat. So they use what are called primary cells. So it’s just the cell that is taken from an animal and that is going to have limited proliferation capacity.

There’s what’s called the hayflake limit. There’s only a number, certain number of doublings before that ends. And it will also have. [00:08:00] Because it’s, it’ll, at best you’ll have an adult stem cell, it’ll have a certain range that it, of cells it can create compared to a more pluripotent stem cell. So as a technology, if I was going into this, that’s one thing I would do is use either ESCs, embryonic stem cells, or iPSCs.

And I should say, this is the, iPSCs are the technology that Meatable was using. And so they’re the other one that’s in Netherlands and so that was a direction which I would understand that I would tend to go to But then there’s the question of how do you do this to you? Does it involve?

Gene editing or gene modification, right? I don’t want to do the whole splitting hairs of whether it’s gene editing or gene modification, but some do but if you use if you do gene editing or gene modification, it can end up in a different regulatory pathway than if you’re just doing something that is not, right?[00:09:00] 

So that, that’s why in Europe, I should say, this is for Europe, most meats technology would end up in the novel food category. and meetable, the way they do things, would end up in a GM unless there’s this parsing of gene. Not even there, so it’ll still end up in the GM, and which is a harder pathway, right?

I actually prefer if you can do this without gene editing or gene modification. However, and so that would be my technology wise, I’d want ESEs or IPSEs, and then when I want to adjust them for efficiency, it The arguments there, if you really want to have efficiency quickly, right? Developing a technology quickly, there’s an argument for it.

It’s just. It ends up being harder on the regulatory pathway. You would end up having to go to places like Singapore or places like the U. S. are, anywhere where it’s more tolerant towards genetic modification. But anyways, so these are the technologies that I would be around. I would also [00:10:00] tend to, so now moving into what would I want to make, right?

I would tend to work on, I would want to work on, I’m going to say I don’t want to just say chicken, avian, but like chicken or porcine, pork and this is, there’s two reasons one is the kind of animal ethics, so it’s more than if you want to do let’s say environmental concern if that’s your major concern, then it’s clear that cow is one of the Biggest that you can for today.

They’re the ones that have the biggest impact negative impacts, right? but if you talk about health and you talk about Just animal welfare because the number of animals that end up getting killed or the conditions that they’re in then, there’s an argument for pigs porcine or avian and so I would tend to do those And the there’s additional advantages to both For avian they’ve got eggs, right so you can get escs very [00:11:00] easily from eggs and in fact, there’s even technologies where you can take You the cells out and it doesn’t even affect the development of the chick inside. You can still end up with a chick which is quite interesting. But then for, let’s say for pigs or any mammalian, you can actually take things from like umbilical cord rather than from an animal living at, you like, you don’t have to do a biopsy that hurts them.

You can just take it from discarded tissue. Again umbilical cord is good. And because they come from regenerative medicine, Porcine if you’re working on developing techniques, any sort of stem cell techniques, it might have a greater applicability back to human, right? So it’s a, you could use them as a model.

So that’s the other thing I would want to be doing as I’m, let’s say the timeline for creating food products or the technologies for food products, it’s going to be a while, right? So if you can discover other things that are applicable to medicine, human medicine, [00:12:00] right? Or even veterinary medicine, but especially human medicine.

You’ve got something else that You can make some money from so I was I was thinking of okay There’s a there’s an animal ethics and health angle as well as the ability to Especially if you do porcine to help move back and apply this also to a regenerative medicine So this is the kind of concepts

Alex Shirazi: wow. Okay. Yeah, no, I love it. And it’s actually very well thought out and. And I think it also shows that you’re very familiar with all the kind of different aspects and nuances, which it makes it even more important as you touch anything regulatory. Yeah. And I was going to say, if you were from Chicago, I thought you were going to try to make cultured Italian beef or something like that.

But no that’s really interesting. How much, this is just a question I have out of curiosity, how much of the, this unlimited proliferation is in theory versus [00:13:00] can be done for those types of cells?

Dwayne Holmes: Yeah. I, this is why I don’t wanna I was saying indefinite, right? I’ve used unlimited before and I know a lot of people use unlimited. It’s not really unlimited in pra in practice. ’cause how do you do that? How do you say unlimited. You have not lived forever. . So you don’t know how long it’ll go.

What it is these, the limits are high, extremely high. And so for practical purposes, you can treat them as indefinite. You’re going to have them for a long time. Now, of course as these go on, if you’re continuing with this, the same cells and you keep going they will accumulate mutations, and eventually problems will happen. But what’s, what is good is even at early stages, you can still, because you can have a lot of material they’ve created, you can make clones, right? And it just allows you a greater mass of material. And again, it’s for practical purposes, you could treat it as indefinite.

In reality you’re going to want to continue making [00:14:00] material, or, cell lines, right? And having them as backups. Is, you could even have infections or something that happens right here a contamination, right? Which it’s okay. Now you’re gonna need things.

So it’s not once you get the one cell line, that’s it You’re set forever No, but it’s just it is much easier to work with, and I would say I would argue preferable than primary cells. And in fact, I want to, one other thing with cell lines, right? And this doesn’t, it doesn’t have to be ESCs or IPSCs.

Another popular thing are immortalized lines. These also have indefinite proliferation. But They have, they can have more limited differentiation, right? So the advantage to pluripotent is first of all, they’re natural or at least, yes, these are completely natural. They’re proliferative and differentiation capacity did not require a mutation.

Immortalized means there is a mutation. You either [00:15:00] put it in there or it developed over time and now it has this indefinite capability, but it does have a more limited range of what it can become normally. And I think that I get, did I get to the question

Alex Shirazi: No. Yeah. That was amazing. Yeah. So I, and I always 

Dwayne Holmes: Oh wait, there was one more thing I wanted to say about the lines.

So because of their ability to go for a while, they have the advantage of, yeah, you can test them. You can analyze what their performance is and it stays that way. So with primary cells, every time you get another biopsy, you get more material, you’re going to have to do. Another performance analysis, right?

Or you’ll find out what the performance analysis as you do your actual experiments or do your growing your material for food or whatever, they will have a different performance every batch. Cell lines should be consistent constantly. So you don’t really, you’ll still want to do routine [00:16:00] testing every once in a while, but that’s different than every time.

Which costs money and time. So that was another important thing to say about lines versus primary.

Alex Shirazi: No, yeah, no, that’s great. And I feel like I’ve always wanted to ask that question, but didn’t have the right opportunity. So you really not only gave me the right opportunity to ask that question, but very beautifully explained it to me and the audience. So thank you for that. And and yeah, so now I can also wrap up.

My head around it a lot better in terms of, okay, what does this really mean and in that direction? Okay, awesome. I want to jump back to New Harvest and first I want to say that your Dutch must be pretty good. Is that right?

Dwayne Holmes: It’s good enough

Alex Shirazi: It’s good

Dwayne Holmes: it’s it’s it’s well, I will be honest. It’s not as good as it should be for as long as i’ve been here 

Alex Shirazi: Yeah. Okay.

Dwayne Holmes: it’s serviceable. It’s serviceable. Yeah

Alex Shirazi: Okay. Yeah. A very difficult language to learn. But so tell us when the new harvest [00:17:00] Europe was, what year was it established?

Dwayne Holmes: Okay, so So I left. Most to meet in 2000 summer of 2021 and How will you get so Basically within that year. So there’s a difference between where you’re setting it up and then you get everything finalized. So I think everything was finalized probably by 2022, I’d want to say. But I would say, we were already, working towards 2021 but to have everything.

Done in fact, I would say even some of the administrative stuff just got completed recently. It’s it takes a while to get through some of the bureaucracy I get in the weeds if I discussed all the things that were happening. There’s also issues at the time where the government was Changing rules and banks started changing rules.

So how you could get bank accounts for non profits became [00:18:00] an issue I won’t But so that’s what made things go a lot longer than they should have so it’s you could say as of 2021 We were functioning as if there was there but as an entity that’s officially on paper and you can do things with It would be 2022

Alex Shirazi: Okay, great. Very cool. And and so this entities essentially acts as the new harvest arm for all of Europe, not just the Netherlands. Is that

Dwayne Holmes: That’s correct. Yep. Yep

Alex Shirazi: Okay. Okay. Great. And and, we’ve seen a lot of great expansion and kind of information projects initiatives come from New Harvest when we just think about New Harvest, which includes New Harvest in the US, New Harvest in Canada.

But what are some of the topics that you’re focusing on in the Netherlands, in Europe?

Dwayne Holmes: Yes, so One one of the issues that I am really concerned with is trying to You [00:19:00] Identify and encourage pre competitive research. This is one of the things that and this is, because one of the issues that I was seeing in the field was that because there was so much private investment, basically everything’s going on in silos, right?

So you have lots of companies, research goes on behind closed doors, and so there’s not a, It’s not an efficient process, right? It’s not going as fast as it could which has led to problems even for the, these companies because they’re of course not meeting the expectations of their investors, right?

You go faster when you’re, when you actually are sharing information. That’s the scientific, normal scientific process. And in many fields there is pre competitive. Research pre competitive collaboration between developers, that might under normal circumstances be competitors, and they don’t want to share anything. Yeah. But they really need to raise [00:20:00] the TRL level up to a point where it makes sense that they then start worrying about IP. So that’s one of the concerns that I’ve had, and I’ve been working on and there’s. Okay, so you said separate from what we just generally do in the harvest.

That’s one of the things that I especially focus on. But one of the things I think that where New Harvest started doing something a little bit different and maybe this, I don’t know if this is of interest to people, but we were primarily, philanthropic donations. But we decided to try for Government funding, actually funding into projects.

And this was an experiment that New Harvest Netherlands, all of them are doing this, but this is something that really was successful pretty quickly with this. We were able to get we hit some smaller grants that came about, they weren’t necessarily government funded, but they were on small projects but then say earlier this year, those are technically last year, but late last year. We got a grant for the EU horizon [00:21:00] Project called feasts. So it’s f e a s t s fostering european cellular agriculture for sustainable transition solutions. And the call for this it was to understand the socio economic dimensions of cultured meat.

How would this actually impact let’s say EU, it can stand for anywhere, but it’s, especially for in EU, right? And this is different than just understanding the technology. It’s understanding the social dimensions. And This is something that the other new harvest entities are also concerned with, but it’s something that now we’ve got some funding on a specific project to look at that within Europe.

And so I would say these are the, if I was going to add, those are the two major things that I’m working on.

Alex Shirazi: Two focus areas. Yeah. And so I want to talk more about feasts and EU horizon. But I want to also track back cause I was thinking about it more about, the term you used pre [00:22:00] competitive. As private investment goes to these different companies, a lot of them might be doing the same type of research that eventually might or might not get published.

Tell us a little bit more about the long term implications of that. And maybe if you have any examples of other markets where it has, pros and cons if any. And this is just a brainstorm. If nothing comes to mind, that’s fine. I’m just, thinking about, what are the implications of that?

Are there any comparisons we can make?

Dwayne Holmes: So let’s start with short term is still over a decade, but the short term is This inefficient, it creates an inefficiency, it creates a perverse incentive, in fact and to keep everything behind closed doors, right? And there’s other things, because you had mentioned publications, that’s a separate topic but just, even just sharing information, not necessarily in publications when you’re wanting to be behind closed doors As you said, you can duplicate [00:23:00] work and it’s not only duplicating success.

You can be duplicating failures, right? Which so you’re, it’s a heavy cost for time, effort, money to do these, to do this duplication. Then, so that’s in the short term, but again, this can affect down to decades. The other thing is this This is what I consider more long term.

There’s especially where there’s a high IP concern, right? You have lots of things that can create patents that can actually block. Other companies or other developers from even starting, right? I forget what the what the, it was the anti commons or something like this, but then the concept is, you just have, you create this area where people don’t want to go because there’s so many potential patents in there and you’ve actually cut off.

Excitement right and investment into an area. Then I want to there’s also another thing. And so you’ll see that there are concerns of well, from people that are really anti cultured meat, right? [00:24:00] Is, oh, this is just going to allow for corporate takeover of our food, right? Monopolization, corporate monopolization of our food. Yes. I’m not saying it will.

I’m saying it with IP, heavy IP, especially patents, right? And stuff like this, what you can end up with is a, what I call a pharma model for food, right? Which is exactly where you don’t want to go with this. And you don’t have to, it’s just if you’re there, if you’ve, if everybody is quickly trying to take over The market with their patents and creating it where they are the only ones that have the ability to make things, make food products with this.

Okay. They will be controlling that space. It allows for monopolies or oligopolies and debt. I don’t think that’s useful for anybody. So I, it. So there’s the short term, but then there’s these long, mid, and then long term issues, which I think are just not useful. Although one could to get to pre competitive research or collaboration, [00:25:00] that doesn’t, you could have that and still end up with the mid and long term problems as the patents eventually come in.

That’s, that is its own issue. But it still can start early if that’s where you’re all doing this, from the beginning this way and you stay trapped in that mindset. That’s what it’s going to reinforce, right? Because no one, yeah, no one wants to be the guy that oh, good.

Alex Shirazi: I was just going to say, especially when it comes to, the food system, right? We, your food system is something that if we can develop good technologies when it comes to food, it benefits the entire world. Every, everybody.

Dwayne Holmes: Yes. And what’s more important for this field in specific is what is the promise? All the problem, all the excitement, right? Is about what it can achieve, right? Especially environmental goals, right? And let’s leave out the animal first. But the environment and health right. That’s going to require a lot of adoption across the world, right?

It can’t just [00:26:00] be in the, it just can’t be in Europe. It can’t just be in the U. S., right? It really, you need it everywhere. And that means Okay, you can’t go in and have these very high price things or very exclusive things. And this is where I talk about a pharma model. Look at what happened with COVID, right?

And what was the rollout for the vaccines? A pharma model, right? That was not good in third world countries, right? Third world, but in areas where they don’t have these sorts of protections, right? Or there can’t get around those IP protections. There was Not a good rollout. And you can see the same thing for food.

And that’s the point is if you cannot get this adopted extensively then there goes your environmental and your health. They will not have the impact, which is, are what the proponents are arguing for. I hope that was clear.

Alex Shirazi: Said. Yeah no, definitely. And I think, when you’re looking at something [00:27:00] that benefits the world using COVID as an example, I think is also important because, there were areas where it was either too expensive or much more limited supply or just simply not the first priority.

And I think that’s that’s not ideal. 

Dwayne Holmes: You had some owners of, I was going to say, you had some owners of patents going, we’re not

Alex Shirazi: Yeah, yeah,

Dwayne Holmes: we’re not we’re not going to allow you to do the generics, right? You have to do, it’s then that area is not going to do it. Okay, fine. That’s just 

Alex Shirazi: Yeah.

Dwayne Holmes: then this food, that was bad enough in pharma to have it happen in food as well.

That’s not a thing you do not want to duplicate. Yeah. And I, from this, I want to talk about one other issue, which is important to me. It is within feasts. It’s it falls within the socioeconomic thing, which I think isn’t discussed enough, or yeah, it’s like disgusting. I don’t think people are as concerned as they should be, which is, it’s not just the development of the technology, but it’s also the supply chains, which are going to be required to have this actually be a [00:28:00] viable, right?

The let’s use the stereotypical models of all these giant steel bioreactors, right there. I don’t know But let’s say that’s what it’s okay. Are you gonna have enough steel for that? Are you gonna have enough energy for this are you gonna have enough renewable energy because even from the Teas lcs that they’ve been out right it shows that this really has to be coupled with renewable energy, right?

Are you gonna have that in place? Are you gonna have the materials that the raw materials? And the specialized materials that you’ll need to create your food at scale at these very large scales, right? And the thing is this is based on medical technology You will be pulling from a lot of the resources that pharma or medical let’s say Industry, right?

Yeah, let’s say medical industry is already pulling from so you now create a tension Between your food and your medicine, right? And let’s [00:29:00] say something like COVID hits again. And suddenly, you saw a bunch of resources had to go to it. So it created strain tension across other medicines. Now you might actually have that with your food, right?

So there has to be an understanding of the supply chains and how they will interact with other, right? Things, not just food, they affect food as well, but how it will affect other things like medicine, right? You’ve got to understand again, that’s where I say I don’t yeah that you don’t not only is there not enough discussion There’s not enough concern.

We really need to be thinking ahead for that

Alex Shirazi: Yeah. It’s a little bit counter intuitive for the podcast to say this, but it makes sound it’s, it makes raising cattle sound pretty easy in comparison. And, we don’t want easy. We want to, we want something that, that is the best solution. Yeah, but you’re right and

Dwayne Holmes: I

Alex Shirazi: yeah, no, I’m just, thinking about the pharma model and all resources, all industries were hit in terms of, [00:30:00] COVID, but having such a close connection to, bioreactors, capacity, that kind of thing.

Yeah it’s, it’s an interesting thing to look at and maybe on the reverse side, I shouldn’t say makes raising cattle look easy. I should say raising crops and vegetables and going vegan makes that seem like a very easy choice. Which it is, right? Yeah, go ahead.

Dwayne Holmes: you can go ahead It’s just gonna go a little bit more into the supply stuff, but that’s fine. That’s fine

Alex Shirazi: If it pops back we can jump into it, but I want to learn more about EU horizon. And maybe you could give us a, a very short intro into what that is. And then in terms of feasts, who else is involved? What is the specific area that maybe New Harvest is looking at now that has been publicly announced?

Can you tell us a little bit more about those two things?

Dwayne Holmes: I’ll be very general about the EU Horizon. I’ll specifically say this is our EU Horizon Farm to Fork project. And basically these are, this is funding into areas as the name [00:31:00] suggests, farm to fork, right? So it’s in the agricultural system towards food, right? And it was just, in this case, they were looking at new technologies, novel foods, and this specific one.

They have others other grants on other areas as well, including, say, for plant based insects, right? Things like that. You got it on, this was specifically on cultured meat. I think I want to keep it at that just because if you look at EU Horizon and stuff, there’s more that goes on there. As far as Feast itself In fact, what I will do is I will plug our website, because that’s where everybody can get a really good overview.

Alex Shirazi: And we’ll put that link in the show notes. And it’s a very comprehensive website actually. If you’re listening, check it out. 

Dwayne Holmes: Right. So it involves it’s a lot of partners. So we’ve got 35 partners from I think it’s 16 countries. And most of them are, I think basically all are in within the EU, we also have a partner in Japan. Although they’re an associate partner, the the idea was to [00:32:00] get a

a very comprehensive look at EU, so not just a few nations. We really wanted to have it across many different nations within the EU and across many different sectors, right? So we do have we have industry partners so Gourmet, Cultimate, Vital Meat, they’re within it. We also have a I should actually plug first the project coordinator.

So I’m executive director of FEAST, but the person who’s really in charge is Professor Federico Ferreira. He’s from the, a professor from the University of Lisbon. And he’s really, he’s the head of the project. And so that is a, an academic thing. And we’ve got Wageningen University from Netherlands, University of Bologna. We also have companies like they’re non profits, some are also partial companies like Respect Farms and S2Aqua.

And I want to take a moment to discuss [00:33:00] those because that’s one of the more unique elements within this and focuses on the the call, right? The main call, which is the socioeconomic impact. And so they are looking at they’re doing the outreach to farmers and aqua farmers. So the idea is to actually get feedback.

From people that are in the current ecosystem or the you know for Agricultural system right though. Who are the current value chain? Players, right? What are they making of this? And it’s not just to say not to convince them to this but to really understand what are their questions, right?

And can this actually or are? If and how this can fit with what they are currently doing, right? Are certain things going to be required, right? You can also get into this is where I was going to talk about a little bit more about supply chain stuff But it maybe it’ll fit here is are we looking at a centralized?[00:34:00] 

Implementation of cultured meat or decentralized, right? Cause that will make a difference, right? And in a more decentralized, you can have things that may even be on farms, right? Actually on the farms or near the farms, right? Certainly in, in more. local production. And then there’s a question, can they also service local cuisine?

Compared to more centralized where it’s going to be mass. This is the product you’re getting. I wanted to focus on those two especially because that is one of the, So I think that’s really key things, especially right now where there’s such heated opinions about cultured meat and reactions.

You’ve seen in Italy, these moves to ban cultured meat it’s also true in other countries and certainly looking for greater regulation. So I think that’s really key and it ties into work that’s also been done in the UK. They recently had a publication based on outreach engagement with farmers in the UK.

So we’re hoping to build this kind of understanding of what the current current agricultural system is, [00:35:00] right? How cultured meat might fit into it, right? And what are the views of the people that are in the current value chain? And this actually leads to, to University of Lund. Where they are developing a tool, it’s going to be an interactive visual tool which gives you a very holistic picture of the agricultural system as it stands and how culture meat would fit into it, right?

So you can actually play with okay, are you using this? are people What kind of demands would they, people have that would affect this versus this, right? and how they all interact with the pieces interact with each other and that’s going to be very useful for I would say just normal citizens consumers to understand how this would fit in but especially policymakers They can look at this and go.

Okay. So if you just this sort of thing, these are the kind of effects you might see and We get a better picture than just simply, oh, cultured meat is a Panacea for everything right if it gets [00:36:00] invented that is not the way to look at this You have to understand how it fits into the current agricultural system.

I think

Alex Shirazi: And I, I see there’s some traditional meat companies, are, food producers of traditional agriculture as well. For example Hugenwalde Muller is, huge in all over Europe, I think. And so they’re also interested and involved.

Dwayne Holmes: Yes, and so they’re interesting Hugenwalder Mühle. Maybe I got it pronounced right. They are hard to pronounce but it’s a German company We’re that we’re really on the cutting edge. I mean they’re notable because They went into plant based, right? And we’re just like, we’ll offer plant based versions of our products and it’s going right?

It’s gone very well for them. And so they’re like, Oh, maybe cultured meat is also a technology that could fit into this. And it was like a great, because since they have this enterprising spirit and and curiosity we brought them in and they are you [00:37:00] They are an example of how things could go, right?

You where a, someone in the current food value chain, but it’s specifically animal, right? Decided to move a little bit away from them and it was a success, right? Okay. And it, they were able to keep customers as well as keep their own business. And it, you can see how that would work.

So I thought they were really valuable to have on board.

Alex Shirazi: Yeah, and they’re plant based products like their, deli cuts, cold cuts that are completely vegan. They’re great. They’re, I should say they’re way better than anything else I could find in the US. So it’s, That’s very cool. And actually we were touring this company called Holac.

They make meat cutting machines essentially. And they have an entire area dedicated to, to plant based. So I feel to me, it seems like some of these traditional manufacturers, supply chain kind of partners in Europe are a lot more open to plant [00:38:00] based. Alternative proteins, maybe cultured meat than other parts of the world and the U S do you have any kind of thoughts on, Europe as it looks at plant based versus other parts of the world?

Do you think it’s more or less?

Dwayne Holmes: So I’ll admit a little bit of ignorance on this just because in New Harvest, we concentrate on precision fermentation and cultured meat and not so much on plant based, the larger

Alex Shirazi: Oh, I guess I, even cultured meat. Yeah. 

Dwayne Holmes: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was going to, I was going to, I was caveating that I can’t give an informed thing on plant based, but I still have, what do I see, right? Or what I’m experiencing. And. I think and I want to say it’s a little bit more regional. I don’t want to talk about EU as a whole because I think there are regional differences, right?

And I’m in a country where it’s much more open, right? A lot, you could say a lot more excitement about this. Although there’s even regions within Netherlands, [00:39:00] which and I would rather not have this right or at least be more skeptical about it. And that would be true in France, too, right?

Especially where you have a lot of the people that are working in the traditional food value chain, right? They, and this looks like it might shake things up. There’d be a bigger concern, but I would say I tend to see people that are more excited, more open about it, and even within Even within the groups that are supposed to be more resistant or a little bit more skeptical, I still see a general willingness to talk, right?

And understand, right? Especially people, especially if you’re in food production, right? Anywhere in this, you’re a businessman, right? You’re you are trying to to see how Is it something that will work for you or not? Again, this is right. Ruben der right. Did this. And so I think even where there’s skepticism or some resistance there’s still [00:40:00] an openness to discussion which I’ve been happy with.

So and I assume that this, or I’m let’s see, I shouldn’t assume, but I’m hoping that with. With feasts because we are actively trying to engage in this kind of outreach, right? That you’re just going to have more doors open And as long as you’re not just pushing a marketing message, right?

Oh, this is great And you should just accept it right as long as you’re not doing that You’re gonna have a an interesting conversation and you will find out about stuff. I found so I was on some of the outreach to farmers from the UK project. It was fascinating to go to the farms and understand what they were facing, right?

And then going, oh yeah, okay, so now cultured meat is going to have to somehow fit in into the same thing and deal with some of those same issues. Okay, yeah, this is something that I didn’t think about even as, A person in technology. Cause it’s yeah, but there’s still a reality, a functioning reality of how they do business that you will have to fit in.

Yeah. So I think it’s the short answer to your question [00:41:00] was, I do see an openness, maybe it’s self selecting who’s going to talk to me, but there seems to be a genuine positivity towards discussion, which is what I like. And then you can work out cause a person can still come away and go it’s not going to be for me, but I’d like to see it out there.

I’d like it available for others. Especially in vegan communities, they may go, okay, I will not eat cultured meat, but I would like to see it on there for the people that are carnivores, right? So I, that’s,

Alex Shirazi: and there needs to be a starting point anyways,

Dwayne Holmes: yes. Yeah,

Alex Shirazi: is one. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. It actually makes me think of something Josh Balk from it just said he on the podcast, he was pretty much saying that when these executives of meat companies, let’s say, eggling hens or whatever, egg company goes to have a board meeting, they’re not like sitting there thinking, how many more chickens can we kill?

They are, they’re thinking about a business and they’re [00:42:00] thinking, what makes the most sense to create sustainable foods, proteins. While increasing, while still increasing profit because it is also a business. And so I think I think, yeah, there are many different ways and different avenues to have a successful food business.

And so this is a good way to start the conversation through you and what you’re doing at New Harvest or Feasts and just the program in general. 

Dwayne Holmes: That this will also be generating a little bit more excitement or interest, let’s say from governments, it can be So the individual nations within the EU, as well as at the EU level to invest in open research, right? Because, again, right now it’s heavy with the private investment, so it’s a lot of closed research.

I’m trying to open those doors up, see. Part of the FEAST project is to see where we can get pre competitive research and sharing of data. Maybe have a platform that allows for. sharing that is, sensitive to the IP concerns. But then it’d be great to just have straight out open access, [00:43:00] right?

Research and shared facilities for like upscaling. This is some of this stuff. So in Netherlands, there’s a Sellegg Netherlands. They received money from the Dutch government. It’s part of the national growth funds and it is going into. Education, research, and it, the last part still has to be dealt out because there was a little issue with the upscaling facility but hopefully there will soon be an announcement for upscaling facility, a pilot facility that many different organizations can share and work on some early stage upscaling efforts, which is crucial because this is very expensive stuff.

Alex Shirazi: That, and that leads me to my next question. How can the listeners help with the cause, whether they’re in the EU or outside the EU, what is, how can they support your work? How can listeners support New Harvest’s work in general?

Dwayne Holmes: All right so I suppose I should always say we still do take philanthropic [00:44:00] donations. Just financially that, that’s one angle, but the, I would say if a person is interested in this, and we’ve been talking about culture beat, but it includes precision fermentation, any of these biotech related food production methods.

You could look into National level cell ag organizations. Now I already talked about there’s cell ag Netherlands, right? But there are other cell ag groups across Europe. And I would say even across the world. And recently there’s the network of cell agriculture. So it’s NCA. I know that’s their and you could get involved that way.

Get with these national. level groups, local groups to understand how that would be relevant within your region, right? As well as this kind of international network of these groups in order to share this information across the world. It’s really an international effort. But beyond that, I would say if you follow the information that is coming out from [00:45:00] whatever source, it could be the harvest, it could be GFI, it could be from feasts, right?

Or locally, wherever your signal is coming from. Try to gather some information for yourself and see what is going on in your community that you can be involved with and it doesn’t have to be part of a satellite group, but you can see are there initiatives that are going on in your area that you can be a part of.

So there’s many different levels at which can be involved. Again, There’s the industry or, the private developers, there’s non profits, there’s the, which includes these national level cell egg orgs, but there’s also individual or, say, consumer based orgs or even government initiatives, which you might want to react to.

Especially if you’re in a country like Italy. If you can talk to your representatives and say, I would like more information, right? Or I would like to push back on the thing that you’re doing. See what’s important. This is where it’s hard to give a single answer just because it [00:46:00] depends on where you are, right?

It depends on what your region is, what you have access to. Cause yeah, a person that’s in Italy or France, I might have a different suggestion than someone in Netherlands, right? On what they might be able to do 

Alex Shirazi: that’s a good call to action, especially those in France or Italy. Dwayne, thank you so much. Will I see you at the next Maastricht conference in in the Netherlands in November?

Dwayne Holmes: I believe so. 

Alex Shirazi: Okay. Yeah. It should be just a short train ride away for you, right?

Dwayne Holmes: Exactly. It’s where I used to work, right? I used to,

Alex Shirazi: Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Actually, I think last year when we met up, I’m like, Oh, I can introduce you to, I might’ve even said, I can introduce you to Mark or something, and you’re like, yeah, I know Mark Alex. So it’s cool to know about the Mosa background. Thank you so much.

I usually just wrap up if you have any short key insights or last insights for our listeners today before we, we officially say goodbye.

Dwayne Holmes: I would encourage actually contacting New Harvest, of course but also go to our website for feasts, [00:47:00] right and you can see what’s there and There’s a way of getting in Becoming interactive with the feats program. So I just I should put a plug in for that.

Outside of that i’d just say I thank you for having me on your program it was nice to share this information and I enjoy talking with people about this subject and what they can do so I People can feel free to write me. I think my address is at the website But if not, you can also your feel free to share that

Alex Shirazi: Awesome. Cool. Dwayne, thank you so much for being on the show. This is your host, Alex, and we’ll see you on the next episode.