Cellular food technology has the potential to dramatically alter how we produce, purchase and consume food, while offering enormous financial opportunities to Canadian producers and exporters.
CFIN worked with Moncton, NB-based data science company Fiddlehead Technology to develop Canadian FoodTech Trends: Interest and Curiosity in Cellular Food Continues to Grow, a report providing insight into the potential adoption of cellular meat in Canada.
The report examined interest in cellular meat, as well as the progress of and research and development in the sector by Canadian companies. What it found was that although Canada lags behind countries like the U.S. and Singapore, research and interest in cellular food has jumped dramatically since 2000.
Food scientists and engineers worldwide are diving into the cellular food sector. Fiddlehead found that there were 22,800 academic papers related to cultivated meat published in the past five years, roughly the same number of papers published in total before 2000.
The U.S., where cultivated meat recently hit the market, had 596 patent applications for cellular meat in 2022, compared to just 48 before 2000. By comparison, there were no Canadian patent applications for cellular meat before 2000, and just 22 by 2022. At the same time the number of Canadian companies producing cultivated meat continues to grow.
While countries like the U.S. and Singapore already have regulatory approval for the sale of lab-grown meat, products for sale in Canada will need to go through the lengthy approval process for novel foods, as well as meeting requirements for food safety, labelling, marketing and other existing regulations. That could mean products will be slower to hit the market, while Canadian regulators re-examine the framework for cultivated meat and develop new regulations specific to the category.