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Mogale Meat and TUT RD Team.
Veterinarian, conservationist and former TUT staff member, Bartels and his team are interested in ensuring food security and protecting biodiversity in a unique way that challenges how we think about our role in the food cycle. His interest in and application of innovative solutions to a sustainable future, got him to the finals of this prestigious global award, which encourages technological development to benefit humanity.
Mogale Meat Co and MeatOurFuture PPP have been conducting extensive research and development towards producing healthy and nutritious cell culture meat meat in bench-top bioreactors. A pilot plant was later established aimed at providing this nutritious animal protein to the people of Africa. The beauty of the process is that no natural South African habitat is destroyed or changed to feed more cattle in feedlots. The process also translates into less methane production, therefore less green-house-gas emissions, which is a big plus for the preservation of the environment and planet.
Speaking about the competition, Dr Bartels, a wildlife veterinarian with over 25 years’ experience in biobanking, cell culture, and assisted reproduction technologies, said it was an honour to reach the finals in the US-based competition and to be recognised for the work done in Africa.
“This shows that we are indeed making a massive contribution to conservation and we feel truly appreciated. The work we do, continuously proves that we can solve the multiple problems, from sustainability to health and food security, we currently experience in Africa and internationally,” concluded Dr Bartels.
The University wishes Dr Paul Bartels and his team all the best in the prestigious global Synthetic Biology in the US Army xTechInternational Competition.