Interview with The Cultivated B CEO Dr. Hamid Noori during COP28

Interview transcript

Andrew Wilson:
Cellular agriculture and alternative protein are fast becoming technological options to consider as our agricultural systems start to struggle with population growth, poverty and climate change. German-based TCB, or The Cultivated B, are pioneers in this kind of biotech and are keen to see it added to the global agenda. I sat down with CEO Dr. Hamid Noori here in Dubai to talk about the feasibility of cultivated meat and precision fermentation. I have to say, particularly for someone in your kind of area of expertise and innovation, a gathering like this has to be worth it just for the fact that there are so many different people here with so many different skills.

Hamid Noori:
It indeed is. You have people from all over the planet with various ideas, craziest ideas, but also ideas that have been proven. And this is necessary because true innovation happens when you put the right people in the right place at the right time and make sure that they are able to communicate and talk to each other. We are benefiting from it. We are very happy to be here, and I think that events like this one are also going to be a huge facilitator for our discipline.

Andrew Wilson:
That’s great. Let’s take this to the studio and talk in a bit more detail.

Hamid Noori:
Of course, thank you.

Andrew Wilson:
Hamid, great to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Hamid Noori:
Thank you.

Andrew Wilson:
Okay. First of all, briefly talk us through what The Cultivated B, or TCB, what that is, what you do.

Hamid Noori:
So, The Cultivated B is a bioengineering company. We established it in 2021. Our headquarters are in Heidelberg, Germany. We have subsidiaries in Ontario, in Canada. In a nutshell, we are a company that is focused on protein production machines. However, we have a very specific way of defining what the machine is for us, everything in the world can be a machine.
So, we work on producing so-called bioreactors. These are in fact heavy machines made of steel or glass that provide an environment for different organisms to grow in. Bacteria, even animal cell cultures, you are always exposed to them without consciously knowing it. The most expensive drugs and important drugs in the world are actually produced in such bioreactors, but also, for instance, COVID vaccines were produced in such systems.
Now we are bringing them, specifying them for the future of agriculture in the world. So we produce proteins that could also be useful for human or animal nutrition. That’s one set of machines that we focus on.
And the other thing is that everything else for us is a machine as well, like plants are for us machines, too. Typically, plants produce their own sort of proteins, but what we are focused on is that we bring proteins that normally do not occur in plants, animal proteins for instance, that can either enrich vegan products for the market or also provide alternatives for a more scalable production of rare proteins with certain nutritional values.

Andrew Wilson:
So, a principal focus is resource scarcity, presumably, with a view to the agriculture sector.

Hamid Noori:
Resource scarcity is a major factor for our philosophy because we generally believe that humanity has been dealing with resources as if they’re infinite, whereas they are obviously not, and we are slowly reaching that limit. So it would provide us with a good opportunity to generate more for the ever-growing human population. Humanity is growing, it would require protein for its nutrition. It is meant to be doubled in the next decade. In order to satisfy that need, we need to look for other resources as well. But we take a very technological approach at this. So we are less ideological in that sense or less focused on the end product, be it the actual food, but more on the technology that comes with it.

Andrew Wilson:
I’ve read that you concentrate on things like cultivated meat and precision fermentation. So I guess these are cell structures of some sort, but does this mostly apply to replacing meat and replacing crops?

Hamid Noori:
No, no, no, not at all. As a matter of fact, precision fermentation is added value for typical and traditional agriculture. Imagine normally when you have a bundle of soybean or a bundle of barley, you may get 30 cents for that. Once we bring your proteins inside that the farmer is going to get potentially hundreds of dollars just for cultivating them while doing exactly the same as she was doing before. So, it is by no means an eradication or replacement of existing traditional agriculture, and we oppose even that idea. We rather consider it as a very enriching, complimenting element that would on the one side add to the nutritional profile of humanity, but also fill the gap for the growing population. Nonetheless, bringing some new technologies that everyone would benefit from, but I wouldn’t say that we are going to challenge the existing landscape.

Andrew Wilson:
Okay. So Hamid, we’re getting into areas that few people understand in any amount of detail. Is there any way you can just simplify the process of part of what you do so that I can understand it?

Hamid Noori:
Sure. Let me maybe start with an example to break it down. There’s currently a large group of people who are interested in trying out or exclusively consuming vegan products, and there are vegan sausages and different types of products on the market. The main issue with most of them is the texture; they do not normally have the texture that you’re used to, they feel rubbery, et cetera. That texture is provided by animal proteins that are normally not occurring in plants.
What we do is we bring those proteins using a relatively solid technology inside the plant. And what happens is that basically the genetic machinery of the plant that is normally reading one by one and translating along the genetic code of proteins now learns that there is in fact a new protein to translate and put there. And it just does that. The advantage is the plant is authentic, it is exactly the same plant that you had before; it just now learned to do something new. In a sense, we teach plants or soybeans how to move, if you want to have it like that.
There is an advantage, a major advantage here in terms of sustainability as well. And this is that the plant and everything else that was in it can still be used for anything else as well. A lot of these plants can produce isolates; protein isolates can be used for biomass, for animal feed, et cetera. None of it will be affected by the fact that the plant has now superpowers.

Andrew Wilson:
In terms of, particularly in crops, is this similar to genetic modification as far as wide-scale crop growing is concerned?

Hamid Noori:
In a sense, yes. Although the target and the ideas are different. We need to use genetic modification in order to teach the plant to translate its amino acids into proteins, that they’re, for instance, animal-like proteins. But the typical genetic engineering approaches in plant biology, in agriculture, were meant to just increase the harvest. Now, we are on top of that adding additional value to the level that plants could become new sources of producing pharmaceuticals or also food ingredients that normally would come from, for instance, animal breeding, et cetera.

Andrew Wilson:
So, are you being encouraged by the agricultural sector or by the food production sector, or are you being challenged by them? Are people welcoming or suspicious or both of the work that you’re doing?
Hamid Noori:
I would say both, to be very honest. We have a lot of interest from the food production sector. Some companies, our mother company, InFamily Foods in Germany, is a company that has focused a lot on transforming the industry from within. This is where we even were inspired to start doing so, doing what we are doing right now. There is in that sense a need for transformation that larger industries are recognizing. And I have to admit, the larger the factories and the industries are, the higher is the chance that they like these new ideas because these new ideas help them adjust to the new trends in the society and the new mindset of the society.
There is some resistance on the other hand, which I believe to a certain degree is also due to the fact that we haven’t been able yet to communicate perfectly the advantages for all the sides. So for instance, many people from the traditional agriculture may consider what we do competing, whereas I consider that being synergizing and in the end, in fact, adding value. For instance, even for the animal breeding industry, these ideas could be synergizing because they could lead to circular economy effects where you may even get more value out of what you had before, while you may even breed less animals. So it could be a true win-win, but communication hasn’t been taking too much place here to reach that.

Andrew Wilson:
Well, you mentioned synergy and communication, here we are at COP28, this is the largest such gathering to look at all these kind of issues, and we know that the headline is emissions reduction, but beneath that, there is the sustainability conversation. All sorts of different parties coming to talk exactly about how we manage our resources, how we proceed, how we make best use of what we have left. Surely, you have quite a part to play in those discussions.

Hamid Noori:
I think we do. As a matter of fact, I think we do. And this comes on both sides, the climate change and sustainability element. Resource scarcity was one of the topics that you mentioned that goes hand in hand with the sustainability topics, less energy consumption, less resource consumption and gaining more value is one. But we also need to pay attention to the fact that climate change is going to affect traditional agriculture as well, and we need to find new ways for the farmers of the future to actually generate revenue, to gain some power over time, although the world is changing.
In the region where we are currently, the first conflicts are occurring because of lack of water. This is something we cannot underestimate and just ignore it. There is no way that we can have very large scale traditional agriculture here and there where there is no water. So we need to come up with new approaches that would enable that. And this is one of those things that our company is focused on, known ideologically and very technologically oriented, very pragmatic approach in that sense. But in a sense, we are there so that in 20 years, farmers in this region can also feed themselves.

Andrew Wilson:
So, for you then, Dr. Hamid Noori, how important is this work on a personal level?

Hamid Noori:
Look, I have been a scientist my entire life. I never wanted to be anything different. And it turned out that this what we are doing right now could be a legacy element for my entire life. Doing something that has an impact, has a direct measurable impact for the human society, is something everyone would dream of, at least I was always dreaming of being and doing. And I think it’s in a sense part of what I always wanted to do and what I always wanted to be.

Andrew Wilson:
Hamid, absolute pleasure. Great talking to you. Thanks.

Hamid Noori:
Thank you so much.