Sissel Beate Rønning of Nofima

Learn more and register for the 10th edition of the International Scientific Conference on Cultured Meat at www.culturedmeatconference.com

Thanks for joining us on the cultured meat and future food podcast. I’m really excited to have Cecil running on the show today. Cecil, welcome to the show. Thank you. Cecil. We’ve been working together on the ISCCM, which I’m excited to talk a little bit more about, and we’ll dive into that in a little bit more detail.

But tell us a little bit about your academic background. First of all, I can say that I have not had a very good plan during my academic background. Everything is, has happened by chance. It all started, when I was really young, because I had a father who was really eager for me to join a very prestigious university in our hometown.

So he was always like, look at this building here. You will study here when you grow up, Cecil. And when the time came, when I was about to start studying, I felt I have to move somewhere else. I cannot go to this university. It was really, in physics and maths. And I felt Oh, I have to go somewhere else.

So I, I moved to, to the town furthest away from my hometown. And I chose a topic I didn’t have any clue about. So I chose biology and I moved to Tromsø, which is the furthest, is really far up north in Norway. And and when I came there, I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know the the topics I but I had this, we were assigned these mentors when we started the, these were students that had been there for a couple of years to, take care of us.

And I can say I had this mentor that took really good care of me because we married in a few years. later. So I met my husband there. He was my mentor and then my father, he called me a week later because then I had the, I could Could go to this really prestigious university in Heim.

And I said, oh, but the biology is so funny. Even if I hadn’t started the biology, it’s just that it was so cool to be there. The city was amazing. It was, Northern Lights and my husband. Yeah he wasn’t my husband then, but, so I stayed there and I have never regretted it because I found out that I loved biology and it was amazing to be there.

And then I had had a master’s in. degree there. But since I am from the southern part of Norway, I, when I was going to have my first position, I had, I felt that I had to move. I wanted to move south again. So I took a PhD in the Veterinary Institute. And here again, it was by coincidence because I actually had two PhD positions offered the same day.

And I chose the one with the best laboratory facilities. because I didn’t want to. So it was like by chance, so I didn’t have a plan. One was about HIV in patients and one was genetically modified organisms in food. And I, so it was and then I chose the GMO, a PhD, to develop methods to detect if, if there are any food retaining in a food product, because it was really it was not allowed. I guess it’s not allowed today as well, but they no traces of GMO could be in, in in in food products in Norway. And then I moved to And that was a That, sorry no that was in the South of Norway.

So it was in a different city. Okay, cool. So then it was in Oslo, the capital. And, as I said, I chose that because they had a modern laboratory. So it was not the topic at all. Interesting. That’s very important. Having a nice lab space. Yeah, so that, yeah, so I felt a bit shallow because the other one was really old and, but the topics were exciting, both of them.

And I didn’t regret choosing the GMO PhD because that was a really interesting topic and it still is. So it was it was fun on the technology side, but it was also interesting to be part of this polarized topic that a lot of people have meanings about content. Feelings and so on.

Yeah. And then I took a postdoc completely different again. Then I moved to the Oslo University Hospital working with cancer cells and cancer biology and completely basic science. So as you see no no clear pattern of , my education. And after that postdoc, I had another postdoc at.

NoMo where I work today. So I moved there in, yeah, so that was my second postdoc. NoMo is is a food research institute and it’s, applied institute. So I moved from the basic science that I worked with at the university hospital to a more applied science applied institute where I work today.

Wow. Very cool. Okay. So you went from GMO to the cancer research and then back to food. Yeah. Okay. And so tell us about Nofima and I guess what kind of organization is it? How big is it? And what are the kind of different aspects maybe not that just you work on, but what are the kind of different aspects of Nofima in general?

So no, FEMA is is one, one of the, I think it’s one of the largest applied research institute within the food in the Northern Europe. So it we are in food and we are in aquaculture and in fisheries. We work on all kinds of the food value chain. And what is interesting is that we separate green food.

That is land based food and then blue food that is seafood. So that’s why I work in the department of food and then we have aquaculture and fishers with others would also regard as food, but they are separated and they are even separated in the financial systems in Norway. So you have a blue sector and green sector.

So in the FEMA we have a vision that is sustainable food for everyone. So we work in all kinds of food science. So we work, for example, in aquaculture, there we work with the whole value chain from the, from from the feed ingredients to salmon, to the genetics and to handling and to, to.

process the salmon and harvest and so on. For fisheries, we work on on economics. We work on the, how can you have a ethical catch of a wild fish and all kinds of fish on, on boats. And for the food we work mostly After the animal is slaughtered. So we don’t work with feed for for livestock, for example, but we’d work from the moment the animal or the chicken or whatever is is yeah, slaughtered or then we work with all kinds.

We work with processing, we work with the quality and and so on. And also we work a lot with plant-based food and in our department we have so I work in the department on of processing and raw materials, and we have also work a lot on food safety, so packaging and micro organisms and pathology.

We work on food and health, what are healthy ingredients ultra processed food and so on. And we work also a lot with consumer. Science and innovation and kids and elderly and so on. So these are the topics in my apartment. Very cool. And I was just going to say, I’ve never heard of the blue versus a green, but it makes sense to separate things like that.

Yeah, but then again I agree. So it makes sense, but then it’s all food. So it feels a little bit, artificial that you separate it like this. And I think it’s now trying to merge those together to see them as a whole, trying to figure out systems that you can food systems that considers everything.

As one value chain, for example, because there are a lot of similarities as well. Yeah this is how it is. So we have also different departments at the government. One is for for food and one is for for fish, for example. And I was employed when I had my postdoc, I was not employed to work with cultured meat.

I was employed to, to work on meat quality because in 2012, these were the, or 11. And I was. When I was employed for the postdoc, these were the main topics in meat science. So how to get a tender steak. So these were really important topics. It sounds a bit, silly now, but that was, so my postdoc was to establish a model system using cells to study what factors influence postmortem activities in, in, in muscle.

So it was not about cultured meat, but it was all about culturing muscle cells. And and I my, my supervisor at that time, she had been to a conference called international this ICOMS, which is a really huge meat conference. And at that year, I think it was 2011 or something or 10, I don’t know Mark Post, he had a presentation at that conference.

Maybe it was 2011. I don’t know. Anyway and he had and she had talked to him about culturing cells because he then he had started his work on on the famous first burger. So I was employed and then almost immediately I was sent down to, to, to Mark to visit his lab.

I think it was in 2012 or something to see how do they culture cells. So I, I came and that was the period where everything was super secret. So we did not know who the, the founder was because he couldn’t say, and it was this huge production. I came right into the middle of it. So I was there visiting.

And then later we of course learned everything about it in 2013 when he, had this famous tasting and so on. And so I learned from him and the lab how to, isolate the culture cells. And in parallel, I also was trained from a university of Oslo where they use the same protocol to, to culture human cells.

So I was also visiting that lab because the protocols are completely the same. The cultivation is the same. It’s just that, use it for different purposes. And then I established this cell model in UFIMA and we worked only about meat processes and post mortem processes. So I learned a lot of cell death and how to, grow these cells and so on.

And then of course, everything has changed Ofima, but in the society to not focus so much on meat quality, but to, sustainability, utilizing by products bio circular bioeconomy and so on. And that and we wrote an application in for the Norwegian Research Council in 2017.

And we got a project in 2008 that started in 2018, and then it was about cultured meat. And I think, and Mark, he was one of the collaborators and I think he said to me at that time that there are hardly, I think any publicly funded research projects like that, because this in, this cultured meat.

The topic or field was really driven by investors and not by the academics. And there was not that much academic interest in this field. And now luckily we see that the academic field is really expanding in the world. But at that time, it’s not that many years ago, but there were not many dedicated research products, projects that were, funded by the government.

So that led me into the, to the cultured meat field using the same methods as I had established during my postdoc with a completely different topic. But yeah, and now the topic was about how to culture cells for for food instead of for a model system. Wow. Okay. And so from the moment from.

2012, when you first met Dr. Post to, I think you said 2017, 2018 were you still working on, on, meat quality? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I see. But then we saw that there was this shift in the funding bodies in Norway and also. So the, that we shifted towards we still work with food and meat quality, but then it shifted more to sustainability and alternative proteins and so on.

The whole institute we work a lot with this meat this plant based meat products and so on. So that was when, and then it was also nice good for us that the research council in Norway actually had funded. So we were able to shift our focus.

Generally speaking how do people in Norway feel about plant based meat? And how do they feel about, if they know about it, cultured meat? We just did a consumer survey here in Norway about cultured meat and first of all, where we asked, I think, thousand responders from all demographic places in Norway, and then almost half of them had never heard of it.

Although I feel I, I feel I go out and talk about it all the time. So a lot of people don’t know about it. Then from those that had heard of it, then from those that answered the survey, we had a really huge variation in the, if people wanted it or not. So a lot of people that really discovered it.

This is horrible and, re really ed and a lot of people were really positive. So you have a really what do we say a diversion in answers for for for cultured needs regarding plant based? There, there are a lot. There are, you can buy those in the shop. So there are some, some positivism for that, but they they are not increasing in sales. So they are at a steady level, but it’s not a lot. It’s not a huge part of the diet, I would say. So these plant based alternatives we’re talking about, and also regarding how many are vegans or vegetarians is a really stable, quite low level in Norway.

I see. Yeah. And so stepping back a bit, just generally the research projects at Noma focus on Norway, or are they more broader to kind of Europe in general? So my project, so the first project that we had, it was very technical and it was, very all about how can you do it.

What ingredients do you need? And so on. And then we, although we had we collaborated with Mark, it was not a very internationally oriented project. Now, we, last year, we started a new project, a larger project, and it, I was a more diverse project and this project focus not only on the technical side of culture meet, but also on responsible research, innovation, consumer science.

It’s concern about ethical issues. It’s it’s also about how to influence the governments and funding bodies in Norway. So it’s a very. diverse project. So it’s and trying to merge both the technical challenges and barriers that you find that I, I am interested in, but also all the other challenges and opportunities, I would say, with these types of disruptive technologies.

And there, of course, we have a more international view because then we look at equity, we look at farmers, we look at the who will be the winners, who will be the losers and so on. So now the projects are More out oriented than just the technical that I have been working with previously.

How much of your time do you spend if any in a lab setting now? Unfortunately not very much. I spend a lot of time working with the applications and projects I do. Sometimes I still maybe do some microscopy or some very basic and I tried. Sometimes if the workload is really high for the my colleagues, I can step in, but I.

Spend most of my time at the office or talking to collaborators or funding buddhists or dissemination and so on. So unfortunately not much at the lab. Okay, cool. And I bet the labs at Nofema are very cool though. Yeah they are they are nice. I would say they are really modern. They are a huge, they are they are yeah.

So we are lucky to have and high quality labs. Really fortunate with the work workplace. So meeting Mark Post in 2012 when did you first go to the ISCCM conference? And I guess back then it was just the cultured meat conference. So it was actually called Cultured Meat Workshop and I have been to all the ten and I had a presentation at the first one.

I so I have been I guess one of the, it’s not that many who attended the first one, maybe 30, 40 or something. So I’ve been to all of them. And I, as I said, I presented the very first one. And now this year I am going to present again. Wow, that’s cool. And so I wanted to ask you, being to each one over the years, seeing how the industry has evolved, how the research has involved that the topics has evolved.

What are some of the key changes that you’ve seen? discussed at ISCCM, right? And I’m sure that’s different than just the broader cultured meat industry. Anything in terms of sentiment or a science or research or breakthroughs, what have you seen that has changed? First of all it is I am really happy now that we see that the academy and the, the public research is evolving because I’ve never been to have a research field where in the beginning there were more review papers than research papers.

And usually in the, in academia, you a lot of people write a research paper where they do academic work and then someone sums up all the research papers into a review. But in, in the cultured meat field, for a long time. There has been more review papers than research papers, so it’s been really hard to navigate into this academic field because there are hardly any publications in the beginning.

Now it’s emerging, luckily. So what has changed, first of all, the interest from the academic has really changed. In the beginning it was a workshop, it was quite few people coming. coming. And now it’s has there are many hundreds coming. We, in the beginning, we had hardly any abstracts to, evaluate cause I’m in the committee now for this conference and we had hardly any abstracts.

And this year, I think it was, it was so many abstracts that were submitted to this conference that we should have had a scientific committee and, to professionalize it a little bit more for this conference. What I see in the beginning, it was all about, really making a piece of meat that was and for a long time it was like that.

Now I see a shift towards, okay, maybe it is challenging to produce a piece of meat. Maybe you can call it maybe a protein or can we call it biomass that we mix into a hybrid product, for example. Last year at the conference, it was a debate on do we actually need to specialize the muscle cells into to a more meat like structure or can we use them undifferentiated, meaning that they are not very meat like and just use them as a biomass that you just use them like a protein source.

And and so it’s more now think more people see that this is quite challenging to produce and replicate a, a tenderloin or sirloin. If you have eaten a piece of meat, it has a certain texture, it has a certain flavor, it has a certain, mouthfeel and it’s really hard to replicate that.

So that I would say is one of the. biggest shifts I see. So first that you have much more academics joining the conference and more shift to seeing this as a protein ingredients with the aim in the end to produce a meat, a piece of meat, but still people see that there’s, there are a lot of challenges.

And still we don’t see my many presentations from the academia about large scale process processes. Still there are really, small scale. It is very little about the bio process, for example and how to produce this type of meat. It’s very small scale. Yeah. And this is because it is expensive to, do research on large scale.

You don’t have the facilities and so on. What, on that note, what are your thoughts on some of the companies that have announced, their Not even pilot, but commercial scale facilities and are I’ll say, they’re claiming tons and tons of product on a, monthly or yearly basis from the scientific presentations.

And I know you mentioned none of them. Or most of them don’t cover commercialization and scale, but from the science out there, maybe some of the abstracts that come in do you feel like some of these companies have figured out something that the scientific community is not covering or, what are your thoughts on that generally?

That’s a good question. Since I entered this space, I’ve heard that next year, we will commercialize it and so on. And, still, there are a few, in, in US and also in Singapore. But if you look at the numbers, for example, in Singapore, I don’t know how many servings, I think it’s less than 1000.

But don’t, quote me on the numbers, but I think, although they, they serve these chicken nuggets in Singapore, there are hardly any actual that are served. It is hard for me to say if the companies have figured out something that the academic environment haven’t. But there are no publications at least showing the possibilities or the feasibility in large scale.

So we will wait and see. And I hope that the companies actually have can do what they promised because this, Otherwise the, this field will drop. If we don’t produce and sell something in more larger scale soon, I think the investors will yeah, we will have a drop in investments. And we already see that.

I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t believe in the technology or if it’s just because of the situation in the world, but we see a drop in investments now in this field. And we’re So I, I hope the companies have figured out something that the academic environment haven’t, published yet.

Absolutely. So I wanted to just mention the dates of the upcoming ISCCM event November 17th through 19th in Maastricht in the Netherlands. And since it’s always been in Maastricht all 10 years, is that right? Yeah, that is. And I mentioned that I am now in the committee.

I can’t remember when I joined it, but I’ve been it for many years now. And every year we have this discussion, should we do it somewhere else or not? But then I think now that this conference is more an institution, and we always come back to that. Okay. But everyone knows that this conference is in Maastricht.

It is the most scientific conference of all, this. There are a lot of conferences, on alternative proteins and cultured meat, but this is dedicated and it’s pure scientific almost and it’s an institution. So it is in Maastricht and Maastricht is a wonderful city. So every year we come back.

Now we will have it in Maastricht even if it could be nice to, go to other cities. I think it will be in Maastricht. It’s an institutional conference. Absolutely. And in fact I oftentimes either refer to it myself or hear other people refer to as ISCCM. The Maastricht conference.

Yeah. And that’s why it changed something that has already settled. I’m afraid that yeah, I don’t know, will it attract more people if you go to other countries maybe, but still we see that there, there is, there are a lot of international coming to the conference, even if it is in Maastricht.

For me, it takes quite a long time because Maastricht, although they claim that it’s in the heart of Europe, it’s It would be more convenient if it was in Brussels or Amsterdam or any of the others. We talked about the last 10 years. I wanted to ask you what can you imagine will be different over the next 10 years at ISCCM?

I hope that we still get a lot of people coming there. We have a lot of discussions that we also have this this space to, talk about not only the possibilities, but also the challenges that is an open conference. And I can say that when we evaluate the abstracts we always want to people to talk who actually share data.

We don’t want we we welcome companies to, to present at the conference, but then they also have to share their data. So it’s, I hope that also for the next 10 years, this will be an important scientific conference with the data sharing and where we discussed everything openly.

I hope that will also continue. Absolutely. And I think I want to track back to one of the calls we had over the last I don’t know, maybe one or two years. But the topic also not only came up of maybe changing the location, but Also using the term cultivated versus cultured. And I think you had some good insights on that from a scientific standpoint.

Do you remember what those are? Or I guess, what’s your take on it? That is a very good question. How about to call it, and this has been a topic for the, this field many years. I think I think maybe I mix it also in sometimes I call it cultivated, sometimes cultured. It sounds better with cultured in Norwegian.

That’s why I guess I call it culture, but I think at least when there was this period where they wanted to call it clean meat, for example. And I think now this is not a name that, Many use because then it, it refers to an conventional meat being dirty. And I think that will, some people would say that, but then if you want to, have an impact, we would also want the traditional meat eaters to eat this right.

And then you’d. cannot, push them away with it’s, the name of this is really important and how people feel about it. For example, in a consumer survey here in Norway, they called it synthetic. I think that a lot of people would consider synthetic a negative loaded name. And also clean meat would be.

for some people positive, but also for a lot of people will be negative. So the name is is important and I don’t think it’s completely settled how, what we should call it, what is the good yeah. So it’s a good it’s a good discussion, but I think cultured or cultivated are the two most common phrases now, I think.

In the survey that was using synthetic, they only use synthetic when describing it? Oh, wow. Yeah. So that, yeah. And yeah. And now for the survey we used, we had actually different names and I think they were to label what name they preferred. That was in Norwegian, but I think synthetic is a bad choice.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Especially when you’re thinking about food and yeah. And a lot of times when I hear, clean clean meat compared to clean energy, I think I oftentimes, I oftentimes think about coal, for example, is inherently a dirty kind of food. Industry.

And so I think clean came more of how dirty coal is, but but yeah I think we’ll see what what changes there will be over then maybe over the next 10 years at ISTCM, it’ll be called something totally different. Yeah. And this debate is interesting also because I know there are a lot of discussions.

Can you even call it meat? And we had this same discussion, not for meat here in Norway but about cheese. And I think in the end can you call it cheese if it’s not made of milk? So in the end they were not allowed to call it cheese. So now they call it a different cheese like, or spread or whatever.

So I think that will also be a discussion and I think it’s already a discussion, is it in US already? Can you call it meat or not? Yeah. Yeah. And I guess right now, even a bigger topic is that there are a couple of states that I just have gone ahead and banned it. Yeah, I think that is really an academic to ban something that are not even in the market.

We could be seeing that, okay, this this technology is not going to happen. Okay, that is if we, we find out, okay, it’s not sustainable, it’s not ethical or whatever. But not to, to ban it before it’s even developed, that is really unscientific to do. I think we should, allow, we should develop it and then we should see, okay.

Is it really we need to explore it as an alternative and then we could say yes or no. But before it’s even developed, I think it’s really an academic to, ban something that could be a good alternative. Yeah. And I guess what’s even funnier is that I guess when, of the concepts that were released, they did get approval from the government agencies.

So then to go ahead and ban it. Yeah, it’s definitely. Yeah. Preemptive. Yeah. And how can, for example, I know Italy is one of the countries who have banned it. And how can they do that in Europe with the, when you have an open market, for example. So how they can in practice have a the market situation in Europe is that you have no borders in EU when it comes to market.

So this is topics for the. Upcoming ISCCM and the next 10 years again, November 17th through 19th, there’s not only scientific discussions, but also entertainment on the agenda, which will leave up to surprise for the attendees. But as we wrap up, Cecil, I wanted to ask you if you have any last insights or thoughts for our listeners today.

I think if you are able to, buy it or have interest in it, I think everyone should try it and be positive to all alternative new food that are developed. Because I think, fixing the food system and finding alternatives to is one of the biggest challenges and that we see in the world today.

So we need to develop a new and better food. Cecil, thank you so much for joining us on the cultured meat and future food show. Thank you. This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to seeing you on our next episode