In November 2021, Ontario Genomics and our partners released the Cellular Agriculture – Canada’s $12.5 Billion Opportunity in Food Innovation report, which caught the attention of n!Biomachines, featuring extensive stakeholder input and economic analysis, and suggests a Canadian economic opportunity of $7.5 billion/year and 86,000 jobs by 2030, and as high as $12.5 billion/year with the creation of up to 142,000 jobs in the longer-term. 

As a new food production system, cellular agriculture presents an alternative and compelling route to produce ingredients (e.g., proteins, flavour, pigments, fats), and other food products (dairy, eggs, chocolate, honey), or cultivated products (meat, seafood, foie gras, pet food) in a sustainable way, complementary to traditional products methods. Moreover, biomanufacturing technologies and techniques used in cellular agriculture have applications for various other sectors, and non-food products including cosmetics, textiles such as leather, wool, silk and cotton, plastics, or applications in the health sectors (vaccines etc.).     

The report provides critical considerations for Canada’s emerging cellular agriculture industry and identifies three interconnected actionable opportunities for Canada to achieve these benefits and capitalize on this rapidly expanding and high-potential global market in food innovation. The third opportunity – Provide Supporting Mechanisms for Research and Commercial Development – called out the need for incentivization, with public and private investment and partnerships, infrastructure support for research and development, training, company creation, scale-up and growth being critical for a thriving domestic industry, and made-in-Canada product commercialization. 

Aligned with this, Ontario Genomics’ partnership with n!Biomachines on a one-of-a-kind Bioengineering Hub presents Canada with a leading opportunity to retain domestic companies, facilitate training of personnel, attract global investment and companies, and lead in this industry and field of cellular agriculture, thereby leading to a substantial return on investment and a $12.5 Billion, and 142,000 job opportunity in food innovation in cellular agriculture alone, and a multi-sector opportunity beyond that. 

As Canada looks to build leadership in the world bioeconomy, new training programs that offer targeted and cross-disciplinary opportunities and industry placements related to cellular agriculture, biomanufacturing and engineering biology are critical. Included in this are opportunities to re-train and up-skill those with related expertise in other sectors, for example in traditional manufacturing. This will ensure that a domestic talent pipeline of skilled, High-Quality Personnel (HQP) is ready to fill the high-quality jobs that the cellular agriculture industry and biomanufacturing more broadly will create.