Research Progress in Cellular Agriculture: Cell-based Animal Proteins Production

Cellular agriculture is a kind of sustainable production mode,which utilizes biotechnology to cultivate cells in vitro to obtain bioequivalent agricultural products with traditional livestock industry. It will alleviate the environmental burden,improve food safety and animal welfare concerns of stock farming. In this paper,the cellular agriculture production of cultured meat based on tissue engineering are reviewed. The production process,cell sources and acquisition methods,composition of culture medium and the latest screening technology for cultured meat are summarized. It is pointed out the development of culture medium without animal sources is the future challenge. The role of scaffolds in the production of cultured meat and the latest progress in the preparation of three-dimensional network scaffolds by perfusion method is described. Several problems needed to be solved in the manufacture of scaffolds are listed. The technical problems of enlarging the bioreactor and increasing the cell density in the bioreactor,especially the technical difficulties of enlarging the "three-dimensional scaffold+perfusion" bioreactor needed to produce highly structured muscle tissue are analyzed. Secondly,the production of animal proteins using fermentation-based cellular agriculture is introduced,including production process,characteristics,product types and existing technical problems. The advantages of fermentation-based cellular agriculture to produce imitated meat are enumerated. Thirdly,the safety management of cellular agriculture is discussed from the aspects of production license and standardization,safety certification of cells and their metabolites,supervision mode and establishment of management department,establishment of animal welfare act,etc. Finally,the future development of cellular agriculture is prospected in terms of selective production of cultured meat with better nutrition and flavor,production of rare animals meat and highly structured cultured meat with blood vessels,etc. This paper can provide some references for the research and development of cellular agriculture.