Japanese Education and Corporate Partners Launch the Farmed Meat Association
This week, a group of Japanese academic and corporate partners announced the establishment of the Consortium for Future Innovation by Cultured Meat, a new group that aims to promote “strong efforts for the public implementation of edible meat production technology using 3D bioprinting.”
The group, which includes the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Shimadzu Corporation, Itoham Yonekyu Holdings Inc., Toppan Printing Co., Ltd, Inc., and SIGMAXYZ Inc., said it will focus on the development and use of 3D bioprinting technology, the establishment of a consistent value chain from production to distribution, and handing over government rules and regulations to private companies.
In August 2021, Osaka University and Toppan Printing published a paper describing the technology for 3D printing of fibrous tissue, such as muscle, fat, and blood vessels. The group’s efforts will focus on Osaka University’s 3D bioprinting technology, which allows the creation of muscle tissue structures at will, and can be used in the fields of food and regenerative medicine and drug discovery.
Alongside the establishment of this alliance, Osaka University, Itoham Yonekyu, and Toppan Printing have opened a joint research study on the “social use” of cultured meat at Osaka University’s Suita campus. This joint research course with the Osaka University-Shimadzu Analytical Innovation Collaborative Research Laboratory established in December 2019, will serve as the basis for the research development of the consortium.
According to the announcement, the group has appointed different roles for the member companies. From the announcement: Organizations participating in the consortium are “managing partners” who engage in technological development, cooperation with government companies and related organizations, and disseminate knowledge to foreign countries, “R&D partners” who conduct joint research in certain technical areas, and the dissemination of technologies related to cultured meat and products. It consists of “public use partners” responsible for information dissemination at Osaka University, Shimadzu, Itoham Yonekyu, Toppan Printing, and Sigmaxis will serve as “operating partners”.
The group has plans to showcase the technology in action at the ‘Osaka Healthcare Pavilion Nest for Reborn’ at the Osaka Kansai Expo, where it will showcase automated meat production equipment. Through this exhibition, the consortium plans to present cultured meat as one of the “foods of the future” which it says has the potential to reduce the environmental burden and help solve protein shortages worldwide, leading to the promotion of consumer awareness.
The new consortium is not the first organization in Japan for farmed meat. In 2021, a group led by Integriculture announced the CulNet Consortium, a group intended to be an open innovation platform for the development of cell cultured meat in Japan and beyond. In January of this year, Integriculture began growing foie gras from duck liver cells, which was developed using the CulNet Consortium framework.
