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Canadian FoodTech Trends: Interest and Curiosity in Cellular Food Continues to Grow – Three Key Takeaways

By CFIN Newsdesk posted 08-17-2023 08:00

  

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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. 

 

Here are three key takeaways from the report: 

 

1. Researchers are prioritizing cellular food 

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. 

 

2. Patent applications for cellular meat are increasing 

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.  

 

3. Regulatory hurdles still exist 

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. 

 

Find out more by downloading the report here.

 

Read more about cellular food, regulations covering cellular food, and commercialization of cellular food. 

#cellularprotein

#cellularmeat

#cellfood

#cultivatedmeat

#FoodInnovation

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Comments

Doug Eatwell
08-31-2023 18:11

Interesting report. Thank you for sharing!

Of particular interest to me is the the question of consumer adoption (addressed on page 5 of the report) as I believe there are some useful lessons to be learned from the fairly recent introduction of plant-based meat to consumers. In 2021 my company conducted an in-depth study into consumer perspectives on plant-based meat and some of the findings would, I think, apply equally well to cell-cultured meat.

Here's what we found:

  • Initial trial is mainly driven by curiosity.
  • Adoption (i.e. the inclusion of the category in the consumer's regular dietary repertoire) depends first and foremost on sensory gratification (especially whether the products tried meet or exceed expectations in terms of taste and texture). If these early experiences do not come up to scratch on sensory gratification, consumers will simply stop buying the category and revert to their regular repertoire.
  • Health is certainly a consideration and our study confirmed that consumers place a lot of importance their assessment of whether a product is "good for me" and it is an important component in the process of "adopting" the product (and, by extension, the category). However, the product (and by extension the category) will not get to this stage UNLESS sensory gratification is acceptable. In this respect, "health" is secondary to "taste & texture".
  • A third, and increasingly important, factor in the adoption process is the "ethical" features of the product/category - i.e. does it address environmental, animal welfare and sustainability concerns? But once again, before consumers get to the point of deciding whether the product satisfies their ethical concerns, they have to first "like" the product and be satisfied that it is "good for them" (or at least is not bad for them).

Cultured meat producers would do well to take this hierarchy of priorities into account when bringing their products to market, as there are strong parallels between the introduction of plant-based meat to the market and the introduction of cultured meat to the market. Both are new categories in the food industry and are unfamiliar to consumers. Both are entering a market dominated by an entrenched, well-funded and highly influential incumbent (namely the animal meat industry).

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