The field is shifting from making meat to making protein ingredients or biomass.
1. Cultured Meat and Future Food Podcast speaks with Sissel Beate Rønning of Nofima about her work on cultured meat and food research.
2. Sissel Beate Rønning is a Nofima researcher, and Alex introduces her as a colleague on the ISCCM conference.
3. The episode asks how Rønning moved from biology and GMO detection into cultured meat and why that field now matters.
4. Rønning says her academic path had “not had a very good plan” and happened “by chance,” starting with biology in Tromsø.
5. She explains that she moved to Tromsø, met her husband there through a student mentor program, and stayed because she liked biology, the city, and the northern lights.
6. Rønning says she later took a PhD at the Veterinary Institute in Oslo and chose between HIV in patients and GMO detection by picking the laboratory with the best facilities.
7. Her PhD work focused on methods to detect GMO traces in food products in Norway, where she says no traces of GMO were allowed.
8. She then moved into a postdoc at Oslo University Hospital, working on cancer cells and cancer biology in basic science.
9. Rønning describes Nofima as one of the largest applied food research institutes in Northern Europe, with work in food, aquaculture, and fisheries.
10. She says Nofima separates “blue food” from “green food,” and that her department covers processing, raw materials, packaging, microorganisms, pathology, food and health, consumer science, innovation, and more.
11. Her cultured meat path began during a postdoc on meat quality and a cell model for post-mortem muscle processes.
12. Rønning says her supervisor met Mark Post at an International Studies Icons meat conference and sent her to his lab in 2012 to see cell culture methods.
13. She says the lab visit happened during a “super secret” period before the 2013 tasting and that she later learned the same cell-culture protocol used for human cells could be applied to food.
14. Rønning explains that the field then shifted from meat quality toward sustainability, byproducts, bio-circularity, and bio-economy, which led to a Norwegian Research Council project.
15. She says the first cultured meat project at Nofima was technical, but a newer project also includes responsible research and innovation, consumer science, ethics, and government engagement.
16. Her view is that cultured meat research is becoming more international because it now asks who the winners and losers are, not only how to grow cells.
17. Rønning says she spends far less time in the lab now and more time on applications, projects, collaborators, funding bodies, and dissemination.
18. She describes Nofima’s labs as modern, huge, and high quality, even though her own work is now mostly office-based.
19. The conversation stays practical and reflective, with Rønning giving direct answers about funding, conference history, naming disputes, and public acceptance.
20. Researchers, food-system watchers, and alternative-protein followers will get the most from it, while people seeking a quick product pitch may skip it.
