Secrets and pies: the battle to get lab-grown meat on the menu

Sustainable alternatives to livestock farming are being held back by patents, a reluctance to share research and lack of government support

Not a week goes by without Elliot Swartz receiving at least one request from researchers asking him where they can find cell lines (a cell culture developed from a single cell) for use in cellular agriculture - an essential tool for creating lab-grown meat. One of the most important things that cell lines offer is that they enable researchers to just get started in this new field," says Swartz, who works in New York as a senior scientist at the Good Food Institute (GFI) - a nonprofit focused on advancing cellular agriculture and bringing its products to our shelves and stomachs as quickly as possible. Helping researchers is a core part of his role. In the case of cell lines, however, there's very little he can do.

Swartz's response to the researchers is unfortunately always the same: at the moment, publicly available cell lines relevant for cellular agriculture don't really exist. That doesn't mean that they're nowhere to be found. Upside Foods (previously Memphis Meats) has submitted several patents to protect cell lines it has developed, and companies such as Cell Farm Food Tech have built a business around selling cell lines for profit. Keeping discoveries behind closed doors is a pattern of behaviour found in private companies across the industry, which many believe is slowing down innovation.