CULT Food Science Files Third Patent Application to Help Address the Global Food Insecurity Crisis via Cellular Agriculture

Jun 22, 2022

an innovative investment platform with an exclusive focus on cellular agriculture that is advancing the development of novel technologies to provide a sustainable, environmental, and ethical solution to the global factory farming and aquaculture crises, is pleased to announce the filing of its third provisional patent application (the "Third Patent Application") on June 17, 2022, regarding the production of cultured meat that is enriched with dietary supplements or additives to help lower cholesterol levels in consumers.

The Company is also continuing to develop its own intellectual property ("IP") in the form of patents and other intangible assets in order to produce food for human consumption directly from cells.

The topic of increasing the production of food from cells is timely given that the world's supply chain is currently under duress. The global food system has been weakened by COVID-19, climate change, an energy shock and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, to two countries of which account for 12% of the world's traded calories. António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, warned on May 18th that the coming months threaten "the spectre of a global food shortage" that could last for years.

The high cost of staple foods has already raised the number of people who cannot be sure of getting enough to eat by 440 million, to 1.6 billion.1 Therefore, CULT management has deemed it critical to develop its own IP and deploy capital to help accelerate the commercialization of cellular agriculture.

Cultured meat can have cholesterol just like traditional meat, which can similarly increase the risk of contracting certain types of chronic disease.

2 Accordingly, CULT's Third Patent Application explores the creation of a cultured meat product that tastes and feels like traditional meat but with lower cholesterol content than traditional meat. If more than one cell line can be grown in separate bioreactors, and the grown cells can be harvested and combined to provide an enriched cultured meat product with a reduced level of cholesterol, then that cultured meat product can be healthier for consumers compared to traditional meat.

Cellular agriculture as an emerging field that has shown significant promise as an alternative source of protein to traditional means, while being more ethically and environmentally produced.

The production of enriched, cultured meat products, particularly from cell lines on an industrial scale, has been shown that it can consume much less resources, such as approximately 89% less water and 99% less land, resulting in up to 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions when compared to traditionally raised meat. Specifically, nutritionally enhanced meat products have been produced via engineered bovine cells to reduce lipid oxidation levels when cooked.3 The ability to not only produce cultured meat but increase its nutritional value could be invaluable to CULT and the broader cellular agriculture industry. This innovation has the potential to give producers the ability to address the global food insecurity crisis, to provide meat products that are more sustainable to consumers and to deliver a product that is more nutritious and economically viable.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”