Safety

Overview

  Safety is a priority element in our experimental design process. Artificial meat is a new type of cell culture meat used to achieve the importance of food safety, food hygiene, and food production. Our goal is to reduce the effects of metabolic perturbations by dynamically regulating microbial metabolic pathways, thereby maintaining cell growth, balancing metabolic flow, and achieving high yields, high substrate conversion rates, and high-intensity production in unison. Therefore, we designed E. coli with an autonomous dynamic regulation system to consistently and efficiently produce superior performance PHFA as a scaffold material, make porous microspheres, and mimic the environment in the organism to promote in vitro flesh-forming growth of muscle cells. During the experimental process, there are always certain risks and hazards. Therefore, we need to conduct a risk assessment of all existing and potential risks, and hope to reduce the project risk as much as possible in this way to ensure safety.

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Laboratory Safety

  Any organism or component used by our team is included in the whitelist and no activity, not on the whitelist is ever performed. The provincial safety level of the team's workspace is Level 1 - standard microbiology laboratory. The team works in biosafety cabinets, chemical fume hoods, and other work areas to handle biological materials. In addition to completing safety tests, we received laboratory training on how to safely operate most of the techniques used in basic experiments. During our training, we learned about laboratory rules, differences in biosafety levels, biosafety equipment, good microbiological techniques, disinfection and sterilization, emergency procedures, rules for transporting samples between laboratories or between institutions, physical biosafety, personnel biosafety, chemical firefighting, and electrical safety. For possible safety issues, we manage the risks by writing incident reports, attending safety seminars sponsored by iGEM, or by talking to other experts. In addition to this, we agreed on rules on how to work safely in the laboratory to minimize potential risks to laboratory personnel and the environment. We also learned how to discard different types of waste and how to minimize the risk of contamination.
  To avoid safety hazards with laboratory waste, we need to sort and dispose of it.

1. Sorting laboratory waste

2. laboratory waste treatment

3. Laboratory operation safety
  (1) Instrument rooms and laboratory doors and windows should be locked on time. Valuable instruments should be stored in special cabinets and specially managed.
  (2) all types of instruments, specimens, models, and drugs should be by the different nature, performance and requirements, subsection, classification storage, and positioning in the cabinet, so that storage is neat, and easy to use, after rehabilitation. Also do a good job of dust, moisture, pressure resistance, anti-magnetic, anti-corrosion, closed lights, and other work.
  (3) valuable equipment and flammable, explosive, highly toxic drugs set up special rooms, counters, and double-locked management, to eliminate the occurrence of foreign accidents.
  (4) do a good job in the machine room, laboratory safety and security, be familiar with the safety procedures and emergency measures after an accident, and often keep the instrument room, and laboratory clean.
  (5) Pay attention to bacterial infection and wear lab gloves and lab coats when doing cell experiments.

  Risk assessment and safety inspection are performed before the project starts to design and before every experiment and testing. And safety measures such as experimental attire and eye protection are strictly followed during all operations.
  Members are warned to wear gloves and lab coats when conducting experiments involving chemical reagents to avoid dangerous reagents such as acids, corrosive chemicals, and mutagenic agents from dripping on our members' bodies.
  All our team's professors, supervisors, and advisors reviewed our protocol documents before we started experiments. All team members have undergone safety training and risk management training, such as specific experimental operation safety, biological safety, fire electrical safety, etc., and are guided by safety officers and teachers before the experiment. Our labs have long been involved in bacterial research, and our program mentors have specialized organizations and rules to manage any risks, and we're always on hand to ask them for help.

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Project Safety

  We have designed E. coli (DH5, K12, BL21) in our project and promise that we will not use any other organisms in our experimental project and any parts involved in the experimental process will not be dangerous. We will use some chemical methods to transform E. coli into receptor cells, which will increase the number of plasmids with target genes. The plasmid with the target gene and logical circuitry autoregulated will then be introduced into the E. coli. Be aware of bacterial infections and wear lab gloves and lab coats when performing cellular experiments. The engineered organism used in the first system is very sensitive to light and can be easily eliminated by UV light, so we will strictly control the environment of this engineered organism during the experiment. In addition to this, from a food safety point of view, we are committed to strict control of all aspects of the experimental process. If the project is approved, future ongoing development of our project will not require releases beyond the controlled range. At the same time, our team members evaluated the project concerning adverse consequences such as human health and safety hazards. It was confirmed that our engineered organisms or components cannot be transmitted in the environment.

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Human Practice Safety

  Our team has always been human-centered and committed to promoting human food safety, food hygiene, and the standardization and regulation of food production. To understand the safety and standardization of our team's cultured meat, we interviewed Xin Guan (a researcher from the Future Food Science Center of Jiangnan University and Xidong Liu（a senior engineer at Mengniu Dairy Company）and seek advice from both experts on possible safety risks and preventive measures. First of all, in terms of the safety of cultured meat, although it breaks the way of conventional livestock breeding to laboratory cultured culture. But in theory, cultured meat is substantially safer compared to traditional meat. Because the culture process can ensure complete cleanliness, and no microbial, or viral infection, which will greatly reduce the spread of epidemic diseases such as swine fever and avian flu caused by improper feeding.
  At the same time, the public has some concerns about whether our cultured meat uses transgenic means and gene editing in the culture process. But the muscle cells we use do not use transgenic technology and the scaffold material used is also safe, non-toxic, and highly biocompatible. The safety of the medium composition is also critical for consumer acceptance of cell culture meat. In addition, we have to take safety factors such as the edibility of cytokines and certain small molecules into account. We will try to avoid these problems during the experimental design process to ensure the safety of the food to the public. Although there are some minor differences in the composition of cultured meat and conventional meat products, the downstream evaluation of cultured meat can be based on the content of various nutrients in the product as a food product, such as the content of various proteins or amino acids. These will be more beneficial for consumers to selectively consume the nutrients they need.



  Our team members found that there are no complete laws and regulations on cultured meat when they searched for related laws and regulations. However, many countries are now beginning to approach and study this area. Singapore is currently the fastest country in the world to pass the first cultured meat food safety audit. With 94% of Singapore's food supply coming from imports, the stability and safety of the food supply have been a pressing problem for Singapore.



  As a result, the Singapore government has formed a 120-member Food Supply Innovation Agency to drive the upgrading of Singapore's food supply system. Singapore plans to source 30% of the country's food supply from domestic sources by 2030. Several cultured meat companies are currently approaching and working with the relevant regulatory authorities in Singapore to promote product audits, and it is expected that other cultured meat products will soon be audited in Singapore. This proves that as cultured meat enters the market, the relevant policies will continue to be improved to ensure the safety of consumers' diets.



  Recently, China and the U.S. have each begun to have new guidance documents, and both countries have cell culture technology on the agenda in their future agricultural strategic plans. The pace of cell culture meat regulatory advancement in the United States has far exceeded its previous regulatory push for new foods. In March 2019, the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) and USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture), the two major food safety regulators in the United States announced that they would jointly regulate the cultured meat industry in the United States. Since then, the FDA has launched a list of materials required for cell culture seafood applications and counseled applicants. And a spokesperson for the USDA said they are very close to launching a similar list. All of these signs show us that cultured meat is the future of food development. Not only in helping to promote the standardization of food production, but also in solving the world's current food shortages and other problems, cultured meat is playing a huge advantage. The safety and regulation of artificial meat will be in the vision of the masses in the continuous proof.