Standardising Culture Medium Safety Testing for Cultivated Meat: Outputs from a Workshop and Case Study

Area of Science:

• Food Science and Technology
• Biotechnology
• Regulatory Science

Background:

• Cultivated meat requires rigorous safety assessments due to novel production methods and ingredients.
• Culture media components may lack a history of safe use in food, necessitating thorough safety evaluations.
• A defined framework for evaluating culture medium safety is currently lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To convene a multi-stakeholder workshop to identify knowledge gaps in cultivated meat culture medium safety assessment.
• To provide a case study evaluating Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISAs) for quantifying growth factors in culture media and cultivated meat products.

Main Methods:

• Multi-stakeholder workshop to identify critical needs in culture medium safety assessment.
• Case study utilizing ELISAs to quantify six common growth factors in culture media and cultivated meat.
• Comparison of growth factor levels in cultivated meat versus conventional meat, including post-simulated cooking analysis.

Main Results:

• Workshop identified needs for standardized residue measurement, Certificates of Analysis, metabolite characterization, and open databases.
• ELISAs showed variable growth factor levels in cultivated meat, generally reduced post-cooking to conventional meat levels or becoming non-detectable.
• Methodological challenges for ELISAs include cross-reactivity, limited antibody availability for non-traditional species, and lack of reference standards.

Conclusions:

• Actionable guidance is provided for standardizing research in cultivated meat safety assessment.
• A clearly defined framework and standardized analytical methods are crucial for consistent and transparent evaluation of cultivated meat safety.
• Further development of validated analytical methods, including robust ELISAs, is needed for reliable growth factor quantification.