Isha Datar: Cellular Agriculture will Disrupt Everything it Touches

“…because animal advocacy has now escaped advocacy and is entering different types of work, really science-oriented work…  maybe that was all it took in the first place. We just had such limited roles in the traditional sense of animal advocacy before. Because it was so communications driven…

And so that's another reason why I'm so proud of how this field has developed is I think we've turned people into animal advocates by creating jobs that let that happen.

It's such a special thing to be part of.” Isha Datar

Isha Datar is the executive director of New Harvest, the global nonprofit that Isha is executive director of New Harvest, a nonprofit research institute that funds open, public cultured meat research.

In 2010 while still an undergrad, Isha wrote a paper called “Possibilities for an in vitro meat production system.” This was among the few papers to ever discuss cultured meat in academic literature and a few years before anyone had tasted the world’s first cultivated meat ball. It was the beginning of Isha's quest to establish the field of animal products made without using any animals.

Isha has been executive director of New Harvest since 2013. She’s also co-founded Muufri (now Perfect Day Foods), where they make milk without cows and Clara Foods, where they make eggs without chicken.

In 2015, Isha coined the term "cellular agriculture" — officially creating a category for agriculture products produced from cell cultures rather than whole plants or animals.

Cellular agriculture is the future of food and Isha is one of its greatest pioneers.