Testing for germs makes sure grown meat is safe to eat by finding and stopping germs during making. Unlike old food tests, grown meat needs steady checks due to its set space. Here's what you need to know:
- Why It Matters: Stops foodborne sickness, builds trust in buyers, and cuts risks of dirt, with an 11.2% usual dirt rate found in this work area.
- Key Risks: Germs may come from cell lines, feed, tools, air, and human touch. Bad cleaning or open systems up the chance of dirt.
- Testing Methods: Old ways like plate counts work but take time. New tech like ATP light tests, phone tools, and AI give fast, sharp results.
- Regulations: Makers must stick to tight rules like HACCP and ISO to meet safety needs, mainly in the UK and EU.
- Challenges: Making more while keeping all clean costs a lot, with dirt rates as high as 19.5% in big jobs.
To keep grown meat safe, firms use top tools, sealed systems, and quick checks to find and stop dirt early. Putting money in better tests makes sure safer goods and helps trust in this new food tech.
Where Germs Come From
It's key to know how and where germs may enter the making steps to stop dirtiness. The main wrong ways are equipment that has not been cleaned right and being open when taking cells. Dirt sources are many, from cell lines to tools, and from the place or people nearby.
Cell Lines and How Cells Eat
Cell lines can bring germs, but they are not often the main dirt source. The chance starts when cells are first taken from animals.
Big ill risks like zoonotic sickness and food germs might move from the first animal or its waste to the cells made. Yet, made meat has more control than usual farm raising, so this risk goes down much.
What feeds the cells, full of salts, sugars, and more, is a big worry for dirt. It makes a great place for both good and bad small life. In fact, 23% of dirt cases in a year came from this and what adds to it.
Stuff from animals in the feed, like serum, brings more risks from viruses and sick prions. As a show, both UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat have animal serum in their chicken stuff, so they need strong tests and cleaning.
To lower these risks, places get cells from clean, sick-free spots. They also clean what feeds the cells before use with methods like straining, light, or hot clean, to kill germs before they touch cell groups.
Tools and Big Making Containers
Tools are a big source of dirt. Bad cleaning, mainly in big making containers and other big tools, is a common problem.
Full cleaning and making things clean between each making are key. Poor gear or not enough cleaning ways can let bacteria live and grow biofilms - hard, sticky layers that normal cleaning can't beat.
When taking cells is a very weak time. Food rules from places like New Zealand and Australia show taking cells and what happens after as big risks for dirt, mostly from places food touches, tools, and people. Half of the places asked said being open while taking cells was a top dirt cause last year.
Places with less machine help face more risks, as hand moves raise how open to outside germs they are. Steps where tools keep opening and closing also let more germs in than if they stayed shut.
To fight these issues, places that favor closed systems have an edge. Testing tools often and keeping them in top shape, along with machine steps from drug making, help keep risks low.
Place and People
The place where they make things and the staff also matter a lot for dirt risks. Germs in the air, dirt on places, and bad cleaning of tools can bring in germs any time.
How clean people are is also key. Places doing lots of things by hand and with little machine help face a big chance of dirt from human slip-ups or dirty acts.
Shockingly, only 48% of industry people do regular germ tests in their work places. This shows that a lot of firms may be missing the harm of dirt from the air. It's key to check work surfaces and areas often to find dirt early.
To fight these dangers, firms use different steps. For example, GOOD Meat has very clean rooms with watched air quality, HEPA filters, and varied air pressure. In the same way, Mosa Meat wants to get meat from ISO Class 8 clean rooms. These need air cleaned by HEPA filters but are not as strict as top-level classes.
"The meat harvesting process … would likely be in an [International Standards Organisation] ISO Class 8 area" - Mosa Meat
UPSIDE Foods, however, picks clean gear and keeps rooms at set temps. They do not use top clean rooms for all steps of making food.
Checking for Microbes in Grown Meat
When testing grown meat for tiny life forms, many use old and new ways together. This checks that the food is safe and meets tough rules.
Usual Ways to Test for Microbes
Old ways, like aerobic plate counts, are common for finding microbes. In this way, samples grow on special plates to see any microbes. It usually takes one to three days. Firms such as UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat use this to make sure no microbes like E. coli, Campylobacter, mould, yeast, or coliforms are in small or big samples.
Though trusted, this method takes time, destroys samples, and needs lab work. To solve these issues, quicker, better ways are now used.
Fast Testing Ways
The need for fast answers brought new, non-destructive fast tests. For instance, ATP bioluminescence testing checks the energy from living cells, giving a quick way to check if cleaning worked. Tools like electronic noses and FT-IR spectroscopy spot chemical signs of germs right on the line, giving instant checks.
Smartphone sensors are a great new tool. Studies show they can find E. coli in ground beef at very low levels - much like tests that use antibodies. Flow cytometry, which sorts and counts live and dead cells with lasers, gives results in less than an hour and is more and more used on lines.
Meeting Rules
Testing for microbes in grown meat must fit strict safety rules. In the UK and EU, it’s under the Novel Foods rules which demand checks before it can be sold. Many makers follow ISO rules like ISO 4833-1:2013/Amd 1:2022 and ISO 4833-2:2013/Amd 1:2022 to count microbes well.
Groups like the European Food Safety Authority check these tests to make sure they work. Makers also use safety steps from other fields, tying in practices like HACCP, GMP, and GCCP. For example, HACCP finds where germs might start, while test runs check if safety steps work.
With an 11.2% fail rate for germ safety reported, strong and sure testing is key. These steps not only keep food safe but also make making it better, making sure grown meat hits the top quality marks.
Problems Testing Many Germs
Taking germ safety from small labs to big full work spots is tough. It gives us a lot of hard things to think about like safety, money, and how to do it.
Keeping Safety Right with Big Work
Making more while keeping germ safety is hard to do. Drug makers are top in keeping things clean, but using these ways in food making – or even new meat – costs too much. For what they do with drug stuff, like making antibody, costs about £40,000 for each kilo. On the other hand, new chicken making costs about £11 for each kilo, so the cost gap is big.
Not all drug rules are used by food makers, they find other ways. Like Mosa Meat says they will cut meat in a kind of clean room, ISO Class 8. But they won't be so strict in all steps. Also, UPSIDE Foods told FDA their work will use clean tools in cool places, not needing the top clean rooms all the time.
To make big making work, companies are trying new closed insides and smart tools. These fixes are from better air cleaning to changing how workers dress. These steps help keep things safe and cut costs, but they also need good ways to find dirt.
Finding Dirt in Small Bits
Seeing dirt early – before it gets into everything – is another big step. In the early and test stage, dirt rates in new meat making are way up at 19.5%. For a thing to look at, drug places only fail about 3.2% from dirt.
Dirt comes from not cleaning tools well or bad things getting in when taking cells. To find these quick so you can save the batch needs very sharp testing ways. But this is not simple to do.
"Controlling for contamination, especially as it relates to cost and scaling, is one of the critical issues the industry must get right."
– The Good Food Institute
Biofilms - thick mass of germs on stuff - make things way harder. Even though new tech like biosensors, deep study of genes, and AI checks look good, they're not set for everyday use yet.
Power and Cost Needs
Keeping things clean at a big scale is not just hard - it costs a lot too. Ways like pushing clean air, non-stop air clean, and keeping temps under control use a lot of power. Add in the prices of lots of tests, clean cycles, and throwing out bad stuff, and the money worry is real.
A report found that only 48% of places test for germs in their making spots. This means many can't handle the expense. Also, teaching workers clean ways takes time and adds to pay costs.
The power needs to keep clean rooms tidy can be way higher - 10 to 100 times - than usual making sets. Yet, with time, as the field gets better, things like set rules, better teaching, and tools that guess germ growth and stop biofilms might cut down germ rates. This could really lower how much power and money is used over time.
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Fresh Tech in Bug Load Checks
New tech is changing how we keep meat grown in labs safe, by moving our plans from just dealing with issues as they come up to testing in a way that stops problems before they start. As this field gets better, we are seeing more use of strong tools meant to fight off bug issues better.
AI and Guessing Ahead
Artificial intelligence is key in making sure meat from labs stays safe. By using machine learning, AI can look at data from making meat to see where risks might come up, which helps drop how often it happens. These smart models check a mix of things, like how production is doing, the surroundings, and past bug issues to spot where bugs might grow or biofilm might show up. This lets makers step in early and stop issues before they start. This skill also sets the stage for systems that watch things in real-time, giving a way to keep things safe that is smart and changes as needed.
Tiny Sensors and Spotting Right Now
Adding to what AI can do, tiny sensors are changing how we spot bugs by giving us info right now at the tiny cell level. These sensors turn physical or chemical changes into digital info, giving us a very sharp and exact way to catch things, better than old ways. They can find harmful things like E. coli and Salmonella at levels much lower than before. For example, in July 2023, folks at the Karolinska Institutet showed off a tiny sensor that can check up to 100 samples an hour for keeping food safe.
In lab-grown meat making, these tiny sensors can be a big part of the systems that grow the meat, letting us watch for bugs, stuff that makes food go bad, and things that might cause allergies all the time. They can also spot changes in chemicals that might mean the product is getting worse, making sure what ends up being made is good and safe.
Putting New Methods into How We Work
Putting these new techs into how things are done now means we have to think about how to mix them in and put money in the right places. The hard part is to make things safer without messing with how meat is made or making it cost a lot more - since right now it costs between £200 and £240 for each kilogram. Putting tiny sensors into parts of the systems and using AI to keep track of things lets us watch and change how we make things without a break.
Saving energy is also big. New systems need to make things safer without using a lot more power. Here, guessing ahead is super helpful. It lets makers know and handle bug risks early, which keeps the product as it should be and use of everything is better. Mostly, putting in these techs means changing systems to have sensor networks, using AI tools, and teaching staff to make sense of what the data tells them. This way is starting to allow closed systems where AI can on its own tweak how we grow cells to keep bug risks low.
Wrap-Up
Main Points on Keeping Things Safe
It is key to make sure meat made in labs is free of bad tiny life forms. To check for these, tests on how many tiny life forms are there is a must. These can get in through people, tools, or where the meat is made. Even if these risks are just maybes in today’s labs, we need to stay watchful to keep things safe.
To make people trust this more, the field should use well-known safety plans like the HACCP and take on good lab ways like GCCP from drug-making areas. These ways show how vital it is to make tests better and lead to new smart fixes.
New Ways for Meat Made in Labs
Now, the industry uses old and new ways together to up its safety game. A big move is the CELLAG project started in 2023 with help from Singapore and Israel. It aims to make new tools to find dirt and create things that kill bad tiny life forms made just for lab-grown meat.
New tools like live checks and future-telling plans are shifting focus from just fixing problems to stopping them early. This change is a big leap in keeping making ways safe.
Looking ahead, working together will be key. Meat labs, rule makers, and tech folks need to team up to set shared test ways and swap smart moves. With over 174 groups out in public in this area, joining forces will push for the safe use of this new meat tech.
To make more meat and still keep it very safe, money must go into both old and new ways. This two-way focus will help keep lab-grown meat safe and money-wise right, helping it grow as a green food for what's to come.
