Future farmer: Josh Flack, Cell Biologist

We interviewed Josh Flack, our Cell Biology Team Lead, to learn more about what inspires him as a future farmer in cellular agriculture.

Josh, tell us about your background—what motivated you to join Mosa Meat?

I grew up in Poole, in the south of England. I got my PhD in cell biology from the University of Cambridge, where I mostly studied cancer biology. I’ve always loved science; both my parents are doctors, but I wanted to mix my research with a global mission!

The world has achieved a lot of milestones when it comes to health challenges—people are living longer, we’ve found cures to many diseases. There is plenty of work to do, of course.

However, when it comes to climate change, we are really running out of time as a planet.

I learned about cultured meat as I was finishing my PhD, and in 2018, I interviewed with Mosa Meat and was lucky enough to join the team. I’ve been here ever since!

Have you changed at all since you started working at Mosa Meat?

When I first joined, the animal welfare side wasn’t such a huge motivator for me. I really liked eating meat, although I was trying to cut down during my PhD. Since I moved here, though, I’ve become vegetarian. Seeing the animal side of things has been more of a change than I thought it would be: from only thinking about “the glaciers are melting,” I realized that cows are really lovely animals. It helps that many of my team members are vegetarian, too!

Of course, the science is super interesting and that’s what has stayed the same. The environment and animal welfare are important concerns for me, but it will take time to have an impact there. The science grips my interest day to day.

What is it like being a “cell” farmer?

You do always feel like you’re growing something. You come in the morning, check how your cells are doing—you get to know them quite intimately. When they’re stressed, when they look happy, when they look sad.

We want to understand the cells, help them grow faster, and make them happy.

As a team, we’re always looking at each other’s cells and sharing feedback. When someone has some nice cells up on the screen, someone will walk past and say “Wow, those look beautiful....”

Josh describes one of his cell cultures.

Does the final step play out in your mind—that this could feed the world?

I really enjoy our tasting milestones. This is how we tweak the process to make sure our burger is delicious. We had a breakthrough with the fat tasting last month. We can’t host public tastings yet [due to Dutch law], but that will be exciting, too.

There is a team of us that is working on quantifying the taste. Feeding the world will be next!

Can you describe your typical day for us?

The first part of my day is spent on my computer: emails, checking data, team meetings, and coordinating research.

Then I head to Watermolen where I check in with the gang. They’re the ones generating the data and doing the analysis. We discuss experiments, look at how to adjust them and then plan the next series of experiments.

We also visit the farm to collect fresh samples from the cows. We then separate them into cells for muscle and fat. The other teams can then get those cells and start the proliferation and differentiation steps. My team tries to help them understand what the cells are doing in those processes.

What motivates and inspires you most about working at Mosa Meat?

I’m a really active, outdoorsy type and seeing the effects of climate breakdown right before our eyes is something that really alarms me.

What really excites me about working at Mosa Meat is the ability to combine my fascination with cutting-edge biological science, with the chance to make a gigantic difference towards problems which are really an emergency for our planet, and for the billions of animals that humans consume on an annual basis.

Seeing the rate of progress we are able to achieve with such an exciting and dynamic group is genuinely inspiring!

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