Nicky Quinn - Aleph Farms - Ep 34
In this episode of "Let's Talk Farm to Fork," we're joined by Nicky Quinn from Aleph Farms, who we will be talking to about how their cellular agriculture platform is developing sustainable protein in the form of cell-cultured meat products.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Mitchell Denton: Hello and welcome to "Let's Talk Farm to Fork". The PostHarvest podcast that interviews people of interest across the food supply chain.
Today on our show, I'm joined by Nicky Quinn from Aleph Farms, who I'll be talking to about how their cellular agriculture platform is developing sustainable protein in the form of cell-cultured meat products.
So with no further delays, let's get started.
Hi, Nicky. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today. How are you doing?
[00:00:28] Nicky Quinn: I'm doing great. Excited to be here.
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[00:00:30] Mitchell Denton: Oh, great. Before we begin, I just wanted to give you the chance to introduce yourself and what you do, and if you have a little bit of time, maybe a fun fact about yourself.
[00:00:40] Nicky Quinn: Sure. My name is Nicky Quinn. I'm VP Marketing at Aleph Farms, and a fun fact about myself is I call what I do aesthetic activism, so I like to make the right things. Cool.
[00:00:55] Mitchell Denton: Okay. Okay. Can I, can I get an, an example of aesthetic, uh...
[00:01:00] Nicky Quinn: Activism.
[00:01:01] Mitchell Denton: Yes, please. If I could get an example.
[00:01:04] Nicky Quinn: It's basically about using the power of storytelling and design. The soft power, meaning the power it has to attract and to persuade using it for the powers of good.
[00:01:15] Mitchell Denton: No, that's great. Well, on that note, let's talk farm to fork. So you've told us briefly what you do. Could you tell us a little bit more about Aleph Farms and, and how the vision to develop cell-cultured meat products began?
[00:01:29] Nicky Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. So Aleph Farms is a food technology company based in Israel, um, in a place called Rehovot. And the company was founded in 2017. It was co-founded by Didier Toubia, The Kitchen Hub by Strauss Group and Professor Shulamit Levenberg of Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology.
And I think that when it comes to like, the vision for cultivated meat, I think it frankly began a long time ago, right? Everyone always refers to that famous quote from Winston Churchill about one day escaping the absurdity of growing an animal in its entirety and one day will grow its parts, right? So I think that the vision for cultivated meat, uh, started some time ago.
However, for us it began, um, with Professor Shulamit's work in regenerative medicine, particularly tissue engineering. Um, she was growing human tissue to treat humans. Um, and it's a very helpful technology, but for very few people. And the idea was born, "Well, if we can grow well, any mammal's tissue, then we could grow food."
And, and this could help a lot more people, this technology, because the principles and the technology are the same.
[00:02:43] Mitchell Denton: Yeah. That's great.
[00:02:44] Nicky Quinn: And thus, Aleph Farms was born. I think Israel does a great job of fostering innovation as a country. So, there's a FoodTech hub growing and thriving in Israel, and I think it's due in large part to, um, an ecosystem that's fostered by the government.
I think that's what you see a lot when you, like, even if you think about a country like Singapore, where it's the only place that's approved, cultivated meat for sale, it's, it's because the government has sort of set this mandate, right? This 20 by 30 mandate where they're gonna grow 30% of their food locally by 2030.
And a similar environment is, is, is created in Israel in terms of fostering partnerships between academia, the private sector, and the public sector.
So I think all of this created sort of the right environment for Aleph Farms to be born.
[00:03:35] Mitchell Denton: Yeah. Great. Yeah, we've definitely had a few guests on the podcast that have coming out of Israel and there's definitely a lot of innovation that's taken place there, so that's really exciting. Would you mind explaining for the listeners an easy-to-understand walkthrough of the process of developing meat products in labs and how this will be more sustainable for producing meat moving forward.
[00:03:56] Nicky Quinn: Yeah, I think the first thing I'd say is that it's not being produced in labs anymore. Um, I think that that's largely a misnomer, um, and that many of us, including Aleph Farms, is now scaled to the pilot scale, um, production and, and production facilities, um, that are much larger than a lab.
But going back to your original question before I corrected it, which was how this is made. It's a process that all begins with an animal, right?
So for us, um, it begins with cow named Lucy. And she's an Angus cow from a breeding farm in California. Um, and farmers from around the world purchase Lucy's fertilised eggs to use them to improve the quality of their livestock.
And as we were looking for a high-quality source of cow cells, we didn't need to look any further.
Um, because at Aleph Farms we don't have plans to raise cows cause really all we need is a one time collection of Lucy's fertilised eggs. And from there we can grow tons and tons of high quality, tasty, nutritious, bovine muscle, fat, and collagen without the rest of the cow.
So for us, it starts with Lucy and once we have her fertilized eggs, we have an everlasting supply of cells essentially. So we grow and freeze and store these cells in a cell bank. Um, that's the second step after Lucy.
And this becomes our cell stock. And I guess for us, why we used a fertilised egg is because these cells are pluripotent. Pluripotent literally means "plural potential". So these are like the cells, like these are the body's raw materials, they can multiply indefinitely.
Um, and under the right conditions they can mature into any cell type, specialised cell, including the cell types that comprise meat.
So after that, we grow a lot of these cells and we grow them in what's called a growth tank called a cultivator.
Um, and while these cultivators aren't cows, they do provide a temperature-controlled, clean and closed environment where cells can thrive.
And in these cultivators, we also feed the cells and it's something called cell feed or growth media, which contains everything that the cells need to live and grow.
So things like water, oxygen, nutrients, and growth factors.
[00:06:07] Mitchell Denton: Mm.
[00:06:08] Nicky Quinn: And after this step, they mature into the cells that comprise meat. And at this point we have lots of cells, millions, and millions, and millions of cells, um, that are all duplicates of our starter cells. And we apply them at this point after they've differentiated, sorry, into muscle fat and collagen, they're ready to grow into a steak.
And to provide this structure, we used a plant-based scaffolding. And after we apply the cells to the plant-based scaffolding, they go back into what's called a tissue buyer reactor, which I call going back into the oven in a way.
And then it's finally ready for harvesting, um, and finishing touches, which include things like seasoning and salt.
After this whole process takes about three or four weeks, and at the end of our process we have a steak that's ready to be cooked and enjoyed.
[00:07:01] Mitchell Denton: Yeah. No, that's awesome. I, I find that meat alternatives and sustainable food options seem to be markets that are currently garnering the attention of big VC firms.
Uh, in fact, I see that Leonard DiCaprio is even invested in and playing an active role as a member of your sustainability board. Our investment firms attracted to food science because of its frontier technology aspect, or more because of its sustainable outcomes?
[00:07:26] Nicky Quinn: I think that's a great question and I can't speak, you know, about all these quote unquote big VC firms, but I can talk about ours and I can tell you that for us it's really important that we have partners that share our core values, and synergies and sustainability commitments.
So stakeholders like meat corporations, right? They're many of our investors, they see cultivated meat, you know, as an opportunity for new production streams alongside their core conventional production. and as enablers of meeting their countries or over their organisations respective ESG goals.
So I think that it's very intertwined, at least for our partners, good business is good business. And for us specifically when we think about who we wanna partner with and who we wanna bring on board, um, having these values, these sustainability values in common is, is paramount.
[00:08:21] Mitchell Denton: That's awesome. So whether it be internal or external factors, what would you say is the biggest challenge Aleph Farms has encountered so far in developing your products?
[00:08:32] Nicky Quinn: I don't think that the challenges that we face are really any different than any of our peers, and I think I'd break them down into three categories, cost, scale, and mainstream consumer acceptance.
[00:08:46] Mitchell Denton: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:47] Nicky Quinn: Um, so ways that we are addressing that, um, is from a variety of angles, you know, in terms of cost, I think because we can't follow through on our main, our core vision of helping feed the world unless we, you know, achieve price parity uh with meat.
Um, and for us we're accomplishing that in a variety of ways from developing technologies, um, that are proprietary for large scale production processes, like including bioprocesses, um, and bioreactors and other key elements that we've built from the ground up.
Um, it also includes partnerships with people that are helping us produce growth media, this is one of the main contributors to the cost. So, I do think that cost, scale and mainstream consumer acceptance are the biggest challenges that our industry will face.
I think that the mainstream consumer acceptance is something I think a lot about as I'm in marketing. It's not something that we'll face at first, right? Because we won't be selling to the mainstream, mainly due to the cost of the product.
Um, but I think it's important that you think a lot about your product market fit and making sure that the early majority of consumers that you're engaging act as influencers, you know, I'm not talking about like Kim Kardashian, but I mean thought influencers and society influencers that then can inspire or motivate or, you know, usher in this movement for the majority of the rest of the population.
You know, people who are first to adopt new technologies or foods, but once they see things play out a little bit, um, with the right people, then it becomes something that they're open to. And for me, that's really what I'm focused on as we enter the market.
[00:10:27] Mitchell Denton: Yeah, absolutely. To take things in a different direction, one of the first things among many others that caught my attention with Aleph Farms is your space program, Aleph Zero. Would you mind expanding on what that program entails?
[00:10:41] Nicky Quinn: Yeah, it excites me too, it's really fun. well. I think that, Aleph zero, our space program is, is really connected to our core vision, which is to ensure unconditional nutrition for anyone, anytime, anywhere. And I think that there's no better place to, you know, vet that thesis then in space, right?
Um, it really pushes our processes to the brink. We do wanna support human life being multi-planetary and we can't get to Mars right now without figuring out how to grow food in situ. Um, so cellular agriculture is a potentially a great technology for a solution there.
Um, but we also learn a lot about efficiency, um, like I mentioned about our process, and we bring those lessons home. So in a way it serves both our short term and long term, um, endeavors on Earth.
So we like to compare it to Formula One because we're testing and, and stressing out our technologies in the toughest environments before incorporating them into mainstream cars, if you will, or our, our procedures here on Earth.
So, it entails, you know, we've done some experiments. We've done two experiments in 2019. Um, we conducted our first experiment in space. It's when I first started working with Aleph actually, and I just remember being so wowed, um, by that accomplishment. And we were able to form a 3D bioprinted muscle tissue.
[00:12:10] Mitchell Denton: Oh, that's great.
[00:12:11] Nicky Quinn: Comprising several cell types in space. Um, yeah, back then it was actually in, um, I was featured on SNL.
[00:12:18] Mitchell Denton: Oh really?
[00:12:19] Nicky Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. It just was like, it's always, it's so fun to see when things like that sort of pop up in mainstream media. And people get very excited about it. And recently we also did another experiment as part of Axiom Mission One or AX-1, um, we were aboard the SpaceX rocket that had included cow cells and everything else that these cells need to proliferate and differentiate.
We call it lab on a chip, and we were focusing on the first sort of stages of cell growth and how the influence of microgravity on cultivating cells. So, and we're excited, we'll share the results of that experiment maybe in the next month or so.
[00:12:58] Mitchell Denton: Oh, that's cool. No, that's really exciting.
[00:13:00] Nicky Quinn: Yeah, I got to design like the mission patch.
[00:13:02] Mitchell Denton: Oh, that's great.
[00:13:04] Nicky Quinn: As part of like the promotion I ended up doing it and yeah, it's, it's a, a really fun program that we have.
[00:13:11] Mitchell Denton: I love it. I, I could honestly just talk about that all day, but...
[00:13:13] Nicky Quinn: I know!
[00:13:14] Mitchell Denton: I'll, move on.
[00:13:15] Nicky Quinn: Aleph Zero is like a gateway drug for Aleph Farms. Like, this way with my space content, you know.
[00:13:21] Mitchell Denton: Absolutely. Absolutely. So what has working in food science and, and cell-cultured products revealed to you as the biggest surprise?
[00:13:29] Nicky Quinn: I guess like, some people think like, science and food are like these separate things, you know?
But they're really not, like science is, is everywhere in our food. I mean, it's nature, right? Biology is the study of nature. Um, like think about cooking for example. Like, it just, it's, it's chemistry.
Um, so I wouldn't say it's surprised me, but it's something that I've learned along the way and something that's opened up my mind and something that's just made me love science.
Like I, I wasn't like, Yeah, sure, I took AB bio. I didn't, but I, I went to a liberal arts school. I was probably one of like the first liberal arts, you know, graduates to be in cell Ag, you know, for like non-scientists on the team.
Um, so it, it's, it's interesting to come at it with that different perspective. Um, but I love science and I wish I learned more about it in school, but I'm glad that I'm here now and marrying it with what I love the most too, which is food and the future.
[00:14:27] Mitchell Denton: We need you, we need, we need people like you on the team, you know? We need that. We need that perspective, so that's great.
So then what, in your opinion, represents one of the main challenges or blind spots in the fight against food loss and waste?
[00:14:42] Nicky Quinn: Yeah, I mean we were talking about this before we started the recording a little bit and I think what you guys are doing at PostHarvest is so cool because, I think for me, in thinking about food waste, you know, it's not something that Aleph Farms is tackling specifically.
Um, although, you know, our steak is ready to serve, meaning there are no trimmings, which chefs really appreciate.
Um, although in many of the kitchens that we have the pleasure of being in as we work with chefs like they do sort of upcycle and repurpose trimmings of meat, um, and work to avoid food waste and sort of reinventing things and making use of all their expensive ingredients.
[00:15:22] Mitchell Denton: Yeah.
[00:15:23] Nicky Quinn: But I guess when I think about some of the main challenges, I think about human error,
[00:15:28] Mitchell Denton: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:29] Nicky Quinn: I think about just the lack of time, you know, I've worked in kitchens myself, um, maybe not investing in the right initiatives.
Like, many people tend to focus on the aftermath of food waste as opposed to like what you guys are doing in terms of coming in at an earlier stage so it can be avoided from the outset.
[00:15:48] Mitchell Denton: Yeah.
[00:15:49] Nicky Quinn: And I think like lack of awareness about the problem. I think a lot of people don't know, you know, just how much food goes to waste, um, and how to avoid it. So, um, I think that like your consumer education, which is obviously something that you guys focus on is critical.
[00:16:04] Mitchell Denton: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I, I, I find that prevention and, and what you're talking about is something that kind of goes a little bit under the radar. I mean, as far as the consumer's concerned, if they show up to the grocery store and, and the shelves are all full, they're not really calculating all the products that didn't make it that far.
So no, I, I agree with you, education and, and preventions is huge.
[00:16:27] Nicky Quinn: And like trash is is invisible, like it gets taken away, we don't see it, we have no idea, you know, we have no sense of repercussions of our decisions, I think for right now in the US.
[00:16:39] Mitchell Denton: Yeah, totally. No, I, I'd say internationally, but...
[00:16:42] Nicky Quinn: Yeah, I think there's some people like who are, might be more aware of it than others because of where garbage gets shipped. But yeah, for the most part I think there's a, a lack of awareness, its definitely a challenge.
[00:16:53] Mitchell Denton: Yeah, Yeah. So has the Covid pandemic, for better or worse, had any effect on your day-to-day operations?
[00:17:01] Nicky Quinn: Gosh, it's crazy how little I, I think about Covid these days, to be honest. Um, you know, my day-to-day operations as, uh, employee number one in the US and having, you know, worked remotely for three years.
No, it hasn't affected me very much, um, in that sense. But no, I mean, there are times, especially in a, well, not that we're in a lab anymore, essentially, but when you're producing food, you're working in close quarters, right?
So I think, when there have been Covid spikes, yeah, we have to take turns coming in and only non-essential employees. But like, thank God for Zoom and you know, we work like, you know, most hours of the day and night. So I think that, you know, we're very flexible and Israeli people are very resilient.
Uh, so I don't think there's much that will hold us back here from our mission. So, yeah.
[00:17:48] Mitchell Denton: Fantastic. Is there a particular group or innovation within the industry that you're excitedly keeping a watchful eye on?
[00:17:55] Nicky Quinn: I think there is some innovation happening upstream with cell media and bringing down the cost, the main cost drivers there.
Uh, I think it's critical to achieving our mission. So, for me that's, that's I think where we should all keep our eye on, is looking to bring down those main cost drivers of cell media.
[00:18:13] Mitchell Denton: Yep. Okay. So what's one thing you wish should know when you began your career in working alongside a team developing cell-cultured products?
[00:18:22] Nicky Quinn: More about biology, I'm like, "Should have gotten a PhD in that". No, but seriously, I, I think it's really important as a marketer in this industry to have a command of your material.
[00:18:35] Mitchell Denton: Absolutely.
[00:18:36] Nicky Quinn: It's not something I don't, I have no regrets. Listen, I've, I've learned a ton, I feel really comfortable and confident.
I think it's really important to know how to, I focus a lot actually in my research preparing for launch, in, um, science communications, because I think that we all need to do more of it in our sector.
I think transparency is paramount and learning, you know, how to walk through that process like I did before and, and story tell around science and make it engaging and exciting and knowing when to pick your moments and when to talk about it.
And maybe not at the dinner table, right? But, um, I Yeah, I think science communications is a really interesting topic, so.
[00:19:17] Mitchell Denton: Definitely. I mean, to kind of be in the science world, but not really of it. Like, you want to be confident in what you're saying and be able to stand tall.
I mean, essentially, you're a storyteller at the end of the day, and so you want to be able to tell a story that, that makes sense to the general public, but also holds true to the team and what they're trying to accomplish.
So...
Yeah, it's a bit of a tightrope act there. So Nicky, we are coming to a close, but before we do, I just wanted to ask, what is the major point you really want the listeners to take away from this episode?
[00:19:49] Nicky Quinn: It's a really exciting time for our industry and for Aleph Farms. You know, right now we're undertaking the first of its kind, full-scale pilot program. Um, and we're looking to launch in two key markets in 2023. And that's fast coming. So I think that that's something I wanna make sure to highlight is it's really happening.
And that, Aleph, you know, we continue to be at the forefront of the climate conversation. We didn't talk too much about sustainability during this, well, we talked about food waste of course, but Aleph Farms' specific efforts within sustainability and the climate conversation.
And, um, we're getting really excited about this year's COP 27 and sponsoring the first food pavilion at COP, which I think is just a major milestone, um, in terms of bringing food systems to the forefront of the climate conversation. Um, so that's something down the horizon for us that I'd love to share.
And, uh, just that we're having some really exciting conversations with some of the world's most renowned chefs and partners.
And we're really excited to be bringing our product to market, um, as soon as we have regulatory approval.
[00:20:57] Mitchell Denton: No, that's exciting. I'm, I'm gonna keep an eye out for some of these developments on the horizon.
[00:21:01] Nicky Quinn: Yeah. I mean, you're in Australia. You can just shoot on up to Singapore.
[00:21:04] Mitchell Denton: Oh, absolutely. I'm not just saying this, like the moment that becomes an option. I'm, I'm, I'm all over it. I'm, I'm making that happen.
[00:21:13] Nicky Quinn: I'm glad to hear it, I hope you do. Next to my family and friends, this is all I think about and I love working towards, um, a long term vision to and beyond myself and my lifetime. And I think that's what this technology represents in its fullest expression.
So, super excited about what's to come in the short term and taking this first step to come into market and then finally engaging with diners, but also just working towards that long-term vision that brought me here many years ago, which is our vision that has to do with sustainability and food security.
[00:21:46] Mitchell Denton: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. It's well put. Well, that's all for today's episode of "Let's Talk Farm to Fork". Thanks for listening, and thank you, Nicky for joining me today.
[00:21:57] Nicky Quinn: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me and Aleph.
[00:22:00] Mitchell Denton: If you'd like to know more about Nicky and Aleph Farms, check out the link in the description of this episode.
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Until next time you've been listening to "Let's Talk Farm the Fork," a PostHarvest podcast.
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