UFV’s Food and Agriculture Institute (FAI) announced April 9 that it received a $234,859 grant from the Future Skills Centre to support their research in the emerging field of cellular agriculture and the future of food in Canada.
Cellular agriculture, as explained by Dr. Robert Newell, the FAI’s associate director, is an umbrella term for an “emerging set of technologies” that encompasses cell cultures, tissue engineering, and fermentation-based techniques. It has the potential to enable year-round production of dairy and meat alternatives and develop jobs in this new field. Newell mentioned that these technologies range from cellular meat like chicken, to cellular seafood like salmon, to even non-edible products like bio-silks and bio-plastics.
For this 2-year project, FAI has partnered with New Harvest, an independent non-profit research institute that promotes and supports cellular agriculture research. Newell explained that New Harvest focuses more on the food science, methods, and technology side of this emerging sector, but that the FAI will be collaborating with them to connect with expertise, perform community outreach, disseminate knowledge, and conduct learning exchanges and workshops.
The FAI’s grant comes from the Future Skills Centre, a federally-funded, pan-Canadian organization. In response to COVID-19, it focuses on investing in and developing projects that identify emerging and in-demand skills for the Canadian job market with the goal of shock-proofing the workforce of the future. The grant was awarded to UFV’s FAI to support efforts to enhance food security, economic growth, and sustainability, and to increase job skills and employment in the emerging industry of cellular agriculture.
Newell explained that “technology alone doesn’t comprise a sustainability solution,” and that instead, the institute’s research uses a social science perspective to explore and proactively address issues relating to the development of a cellular agriculture industry in the Fraser Valley.
Newell continued to speak to the community-based approach of the FAI and how their research involves multiple engagement: “Right now we’re talking to a huge variety of stakeholders, people that are in government, start ups, people that are established in the industries, people that are on the dairy and agriculture side of things too — a whole variety of folks just to figure out what is the current state of cellular agriculture and what role can it play in Canadian food systems?”
“The interesting thing about what we’re doing is that our project is actually a social science project when it comes down to it,” said Newell. “The idea is that the first thing we do is go out there and figure out what people’s understanding is, what their knowledge gaps are, what do they want to know about [cellular agriculture], what sort of things do they want us to learn, figure out, in terms of trying to create a plan or road map for accommodating an emerging cellular agriculture industry in the Fraser Valley.”
Image: Markus Spiske / Unsplash
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
