Community

A central component of our project is understanding and incorporating the needs of those most affected by food-related challenges in Hamilton. In our region, community members’ livelihoods are affected by the rising costs of groceries, barriers to employment, and housing insecurity, all related to food affordability or access. To better understand these issues, we met with James VanderBerg, the Fund Development Officer & Interim Executive Director of the Welcome Inn Community Centre. In our meeting, we discussed community members’ hesitations on plant-based meat alternatives, ways to support those most affected, and methods for improving the implementation process. Through this, we identified why community members may be reluctant to introduce plant-based meat alternatives into their diets and explored ways to reduce these concerns.

Meeting with James gave us a clear picture of food-related challenges in our community. We learned that 47% of newcomers to Hamilton depend on the Welcome Inn foodbank. He described these challenges as a community-based problem and not limited to cultural, faith, or ethnic hesitancies. He added that many newcomers to Hamilton are vegetarian, and their food preferences are often not available at food banks, as many prioritize meat-based proteins. James discussed that this creates obstacles for food banks in managing the cost-effectiveness of supplies while staying attuned to community members' needs.

The issues surrounding food affordability and insecurity are extensive and affect many community members. He described the key challenges around food affordability as being the cost of groceries and housing issues. Moreover, the costs of groceries are not comparable to what is earned through income. Recipients of the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) also face barriers and cannot live comfortably.

When asked who he thinks may have a harder time adjusting to plant-based meat alternatives, he said many community members may currently view it as ‘unnatural’ compared to common vegetarian diets which consist of beans and nuts. Hesitations may also stem from previous implementations of entry-level plant-based meat that were poorly packaged. They described it as being lower quality, and many were reluctant to adopt it because of their traditional diets. Additionally, poorly packaged meat created additional hesitations because consumers couldn't easily understand how to use a specific product or what the ingredients were.

Our meeting with James gave us vast insight into the current food needs of our local communities, while confirming what kinds of hesitations and objections MEYCell may face in our local community. With this knowledge, we aimed to address these challenges with our team and find opportunities to communicate our project in feasible and educational ways around Hamilton, speaking with the community members who access the foodbank more personally.

With significant climate issues associated with the agricultural sector, and current food sustainability issues in Canada, we wanted to learn how alternative proteins and the development of cultivated meat can not only address these challenges, but also complement existing systems such as the farming sector. With the rise of new food technology and fears of it dominating agricultural and farming practices, what approaches to scientific communication can be used to build trust and foster acceptance?

We spoke with Allison Penner, the Founder and Executive Director of Reimagine Agriculture. Reimagine Agriculture is a Canadian charity-based organization dedicated to building sustainable food systems through advocating for food technology, such as cultivated meat, and supporting plant-based systems.

Allison highlighted carbon emissions—a large contributing factor to the current challenges of agriculture and food sustainability—having significant potential to be reduced by the introduction of alternative proteins and cultivated meat. Moreover, she expressed that a substantial amount of land in Canada is dedicated to agriculture. Extreme weather conditions inflicted by climate change, however, lead to a large issue for farmers, risking low crop yield.

When it came to discussing agricultural “job transitions”, we inquired about how advancements in food technology could remain mutually beneficial with farmers. Allison noted that although Canada is not yet at the stage where cultivated meat technologies are capable of replacing livestock farming, it is already being employed in projects across the world alongside farms. Additionally, she mentioned how Canadian farms can be stretched thin due to Canada being a large food exporter. In this regard, cultivated meat technologies would be able to relieve the supply-demand gap seen in food systems.

In addressing our concerns on influencing public perceptions of cultivated meat through appropriate scientific communication, our conversation with Allison sparked different ways to go about communicating the importance of cellular agriculture. Simplicity and jargon usage is essential to ensure the audience understands current limitations of traditional meat, and how our project aims to fill those gaps. Using analogies such as yeast “brewing beer” would serve as a familiar background to introduce our project, and introducing a concept such as fecal bacteria contamination raises awareness of one of the many negative aspects of traditional meat.

Lastly, Allison emphasized using a more educational approach for raising awareness on alternative proteins. She recognized that, although there will always be trends (such as hitting protein goals), resources such as the Canadian Food Guide and the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate exemplify that high-meat diets are not the standard for healthy eating.

What social perspectives should we use when discussing food pleasure, the importance of diet, and where our protein is sourced from? One of the biggest things we realized in our outreach is the discourse surrounding cultivated meat stretches far beyond the scientific space. Culturally, eating meat holds a great amount of significance for many communities around the world. Eating food is also an inherently social practice; people often gather, celebrate, make offerings, and perform rituals surrounding food. This begged the question: what are the ethics behind the imitation of traditional meat? Are there cultural, religious, or even social perspectives the team should keep in mind as our science evolves?

Our team had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Josh Milburn (PhD), a senior lecturer in political philosophy at Loughborough Universit in England. His affiliation and interest in human-animal relations, food/animal politics and ethics, and the cellular agriculture industry allowed us to gain insight into the moral and ethical implications behind our project, from the eyes of philosophers, ethicists, and consumers.

In conversation, Dr. Milburn agreed that pleasure in eating is a valuable perspective to consider that many tend to underemphasize when considering alternative or plant-based proteins; flavours are much more important to people than it may seem, and substituting meat for alternatives that are more sustainable and socially or culturally acceptable can help ‘fill the gap’ to transition away from traditional meat and meat farming.

Virtue ethics was a large topic of our conversation, and answering the question: what kind of person should we want to be? When discussing cultivated meat, some philosophers (ex., Carlo Alvaro, author and philosophy professor at New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York) argue that its consumption is intemperate, and that a temperate person is not to desire foods simply based on pleasure, but rather recognize that food is meant to keep us alive and healthy (Milburn, 2026). Dr. Milburn let us know he is not fully convinced of this view that cultivated meat research and consumption are solely to satisfy self-indulgent cravings, or that its creation is entirely unnecessary, as many postulate.

Looking at cultivated meat from a holistic perspective, we believe that our science reduces harm to animals that can be caused in some traditional meat farming practices. When asking Dr. Milburn about the ethical tradeoffs of supplementing yeast growth with sugar and crop feedstocks used in this project, compared to traditional animal feedstock practices, he introduced an interesting perspective about how precision fermentation technologies impact people’s views on animals. The overarching conclusion was that the gap in differing perspectives between evolving precision fermentation technologies and plant-based meats is minimal, and both still prove to be leagues better than traditional practices used now. We learned that many plant-based proteins, such as the Impossible Burger, are still not favourable in the eyes of vegetarian and vegan consumers due to the heme used being tested on animals. Therefore, it is important we are transparent in our project design and education on the methods we use.

Finally, we learned from Dr. Milburn a crucial point to keep in mind when communicating our science: people cannot help but feel sensitive and judged when you suggest they put something new into their bodies; our job is not to condemn or suggest that their current lifestyles are wrong. Approaching awareness, education, and acceptance from a different angle, we need to determine what angle we approach others from. He stressed the importance of ‘having the right conversations’ – carefully choosing what benefits we discuss depending on our audience. Acceptance is typically tied to values, personalities, and politics; many people may know how their food choices affect them, but discourse gets hijacked by what he calls ‘shoddy science,’ often stemming from misinformation.

Following up on the conversation of perceptions and acceptance of cultivated meat, we spoke with Dr. Sarah-Louise Ruder (PhD), a researcher in the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley specializing in the sustainability, security, and politics of novel agri-food technologies. We discussed her report on a large survey that asked Canadians about their perspective on cellular agriculture and food technologies, which found varying results of acceptance depending on demographics (Ruder et al., 2026).

Dr. Ruder shared how individuals who were familiar with food technology, special diet groups (ex., kosher, halal, paleo, vegan, etc.), younger respondents, and those with higher household incomes and post-secondary education were among the groups that held more favourable positions toward cellular agriculture and willingness to try. In our outreach to individuals who work in the food space, she believed that we would face positive perceptions as their approval comes from practicality; if it benefits the current agricultural and food systems, then it therefore should be implemented.

Interestingly, neutral perspectives often come from a lack of knowledge or personal impact in one’s own lifestyle. Alternative proteins may not be appealing to those who do not have any meat in their diet, or on the contrary, for some who enjoy traditional meats regularly. However, she considered that MEYCell’s goal of improving mouthfeel may meaningfully improve acceptance, as pushback from the general public on cultivated or plant-based proteins stems from a significant dissimilarity to real meat.

Lastly, we discussed major active and impacted groups that can be overlooked in the cellular agriculture conversation, landing on the importance of considering the Indigenous populations in Canada. Food is not just nutrition to these communities, but a deep connection to their culture, identity, land, and sovereignty. Keeping in mind their autonomy over their food systems, the cultural significance traditional meats have to their practices and land relations, and evaluating accessibility and economic barriers food technologies can cause were all new angles to our project we had yet to explore. With this, our outreach does not end at conversation. How can we intentionally engage and incorporate the groups we are impacting into our process, making sure their voices do not get lost in the process? From this conversation, we understood the importance of community involvement, from beginning to end, when it comes to introducing novel ideas into existing practices and systems.