Leaps Talk #9: Culture and cultured meat: is the world ready for cell-to-table?


Featuring Amy Webb, JJ Johnson, and Niya Gupta, moderated by John Cumbers. Held at SynBioBeta 2022 in Oakland, CA

From cell-cultured salmon to mushroom-made bacon, science is making tremendous strides toward foods that are nutritious and sustainably produced. While many urban eaters are embracing meat-free alternatives, global meat consumption is rising by 1% a year - a huge threat to worsening climate change. At the same time, scientists are closer than ever to solving the ‘scaling’ challenge of cultured meat, reducing both costs and energy use. But in the age where farm-to-table dominates food culture, are consumers ready for pork grown without pigs, steak without cows? What can we learn from diverse cultural relationships with meat, how these have evolved in the past, and where tastes are going next? What other global trends in society can help us see where public appetite is heading? What role will chefs and food culture leaders play in driving or stemming adoption?

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Amy Webb

CEO The Future Today Institute

Amy Webb advises CEOs of the world’s most admired companies, three-star admirals and generals, and the senior leadership of central banks and intergovernmental organizations. Founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures, Amy pioneered a data-driven, technology-led foresight methodology that is now used within hundreds of organizations. She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she developed and teaches the MBA course on strategic foresight. Amy was named by Forbes as one of the five women changing the world, ranked by Poets & Quants as a top 50 business school professor, listed as the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020, and ranked on the Thinkers50 list of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world. She has written four books about the future and technology. Her upcoming book, The Genesis Machine, is about the future of gene editing.

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Chef JJ Johnson

Chef, Founder, TV Personality & Author

Chef JJ Johnson is an award-winning Chef, Founder, TV Personality, and Author. Chef JJ presents an environment for connection through food that transcends people, memories, and generations. His diligent efforts toward the food industry have amounted to untouchable accolades: James Beard Award Winner for Best Author and Nominations for Best Chef and Rising Star NYC, Forbes and Zagat 30 under 30, and 2 time Best New Restaurant of the Year Winner by Esquire Magazines. His ability to combine culturally-relevant ingredients with classical techniques is showcased at FIELDTRIP, his quick-casual rice bowl shop that highlights the future of food. Catch him today on his TV show, Just Eats, airing on Cleo TV.

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Niya Gupta

Co-founder and CEO Fork & Good

Niya Gupta is the co-founder and CEO of Fork & Good, which is growing delicious meat without compromise. Cultivating meat addresses critical food safety issues, cuts out immense resource needs, and avoids animal slaughter to help meet our growing protein demand without giving up the flavor and nutrition of real meat. Fork & Good is addressing the high costs in the industry via a novel and patented approach in cell culture that will allow for the efficient production of meat. Niya was also the CEO and co-founder of Comcrop, a vertical farming startup in Singapore selling greens in major supermarkets. Prior to this, she had spent more than 10 years in food and agriculture businesses, including at McKinsey and Syngenta. She holds an MBA and MPAID from Harvard, and an Economics BA from Yale.

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John Cumbers

Founder of SynBioBeta

Former NASA bioengineer Dr. John Cumbers is the founder of SynBioBeta, a leading community of entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders using synthetic biology to build a better world. He is the author of “What’s Your Biostrategy?“, on the ways biology will transform industry and our daily lives, and is a senior contributor for Forbes.com where he writes about biomanufacturing and synthetic biology. Dr. Cumbers has founded multiple startups, is an operating partner and investor at the deep tech investment fund DCVC, and has received awards and grants from the National Academy of Sciences. He earned his PhD in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry from Brown University, is originally from the UK and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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