Callan MacDonald, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, has won PETA’s first-ever Future Without Speciesism Cash Award for his AgriCell project, which could “revolutionize the cultivated meat industry, saving billions of animals.”
AgriCell is a cell bank designed to standardize and archive primary cells — the building blocks for cultivated meat production — and provide a shared resource of reliable and well-characterized cells. The initiative seeks to address the challenges arising from the variability in primary cells, which can impact the cost-efficiency of growing meat in bioreactors, as well as the final product’s taste, flavor, and texture.
PETA argues that companies continue to search for the best primary cell sources (freshly isolated from organ tissue) and tend to keep their successful cell sources secret, which can hinder the industry’s progress and lead to repeated animal suffering. This is where MacDonald’s cell bank comes in. Working as a nonprofit, AgriCell will acquire and grant academic and private labs access to genetically identical primary cells capable of infinite replication, reducing the need to harm animals for research.
Callan received $2,500 to support his project. “Exciting developments like this one from Callan remind everyone of an inevitable global shift in conscientious eating,” PETA shared in the announcement.
Technology vs animal exploitation
With the Future Without Speciesism Cash Award, PETA aims to encourage young innovators to create technologies that reduce animal exploitation. The prizes range from $1,000 to $10,000 and support the development of ideas into actionable projects. Participants retain ownership rights to their inventions, and the awards do not prevent them from patenting their work.
PETA emphasizes the growing trend of utilizing technology to replace traditional animal exploitation methods. From innovations in the fashion industry to alternatives in animal testing to alternative proteins such as cultivated meat, technologies not only aim to prevent animal exploitation but also contribute to environmental conservation, pollution reduction, and significant improvements in human health.
“PETA has long been an advocate of cultivated meat because we believe it’s the first important step toward realizing the dream of one day putting environmentally sound, humanely produced real meat into the hands and mouths of people who insist on eating animal flesh,” the non-profit added.
