Cellular Agriculture Netherlands (CAN) explains how the Netherlands is pioneering innovation in cellular agriculture and urges Europe to take note to allow the cell ag ecosystem to thrive.
Europe’s next leap in food resilience will not come from a single moonshot lab or a single unicorn. It will come from capability: a collaborative ecosystem of education, research, and scale-up infrastructure that lets ideas become food ingredients, ingredients become food products, and products become dinner – safely and at speed. That is the bet the Netherlands has made for cellular agriculture (cell ag), and it is working.
From projects to capacity
Cellular agriculture, producing animal proteins via precision fermentation or cell culture, sits at the intersection of food security, safety, diversity, sovereignty, sustainability, and growth. But across Europe, two opposing currents shape its outlook: a cautious investment climate and political headwinds on one side; record-level scientific activity and maturing technology on the other. In this environment, shared infrastructure is not a luxury; it’s the bridge from promising science to practical markets.
This is where Cellular Agriculture Netherlands (CAN) comes in. CAN is an independent foundation that convenes universities, applied science partners, start-ups, corporates, non-profit organisations (NGOs), and government to build a national capability. It is open, collaborative, and focused on getting from lab to production line.
What CAN is and why the Dutch model matters
The Netherlands has a habit of solving hard problems by building coalitions that share tools and knowledge. CAN is the expression of that habit for cell ag. It is a neutral orchestrator that aligns stakeholders and keeps three workstreams moving in lockstep: Education, Research, and Open-access scale-up facilities so that people, ideas, and bioreactors come online together. In 2024, those engines moved from planning to delivery.
The integrated programme: Education + Research + Scale-up
Education
To build a workforce that can stand up real production, the CAN consortium launched the first Masters- and post-Masters-level courses faster than expected, with stronger-than-forecast student interest and solid evaluations. Work has started to bring HBO (applied sciences) modules online in the 2025/26 academic year, backed by a labour-market analysis that spells out the blend of biotechnology, microbiology, cell biology, process engineering, and data/QA/automation skills employers need.
Research
Within a year, three assistant professor positions were filled at TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research (WUR), and Maastricht University. Nine PhDs and five EngDs are underway across the core programme, with open NWO calls in preparation to widen participation across institutes and industry. The cadence is set: semi-annual education/research meetings, consortium governance, and spill-in/spill-out with adjacent initiatives.
Open-access scale-up
In December 2024, the Netherlands approved two open-access facilities: Cultivate at Scale (CaS) in Maastricht (cell culture) and the Biotechnology Fermentation Factory (BFF) in Ede (precision fermentation). Notably, more than 50% of the scale-up costs will be privately financed – evidence that shared infrastructure, if well designed, can crowd in capital rather than crowd it out. Both facilities are now set up to take external projects, offering 1,000L cell culture and a 10,000L fermentation lines on defined timelines, with collaboration agreements creating synergies with the education and research streams.
Credit: CC BY Ivy Farm
This integrated approach has had a measurable effect on the overall programme budget: from a total CAN programme of €84.8m originally to €100m+ now, driven by higher co-financing for scale-up. This is another sign that the ecosystem believes in the model.
Proof of momentum: Pre-approval tastings, spillovers, investments, and community
Safety-first tastings under a national Code of Practice
CAN serves as the secretariat and co-ordination point for cultivated-food tastings prior to EU approval – an EU-first for public tastings, bringing together an independent expert committee, companies, and ministries. This framework, grounded in a published Code of Practice, enabled multiple successful tastings at Dutch companies and is being extended, with partners, to innovative fermentation. In parallel, Wageningen is supporting independent evaluation. It is practical, transparent, and replicable.
Spillovers to and from adjacent fields
Work is linking cell ag to circular agriculture and regenerative medicine, exploring shared problem-sets and joint projects. Researchers in the NGF programme are already pulling in additional competitive grants and collaborations, compounding the public investment.
Investments and industrial signals
Even amid global headwinds, investments flowed, with notable capital rounds (e.g., tens of millions) for leading Dutch cell ag players. A first international cell ag company chose the Netherlands as a base. Meanwhile, global milestones like Singapore deployments, Israeli approvals in process, and UK pet food authorisations create a pragmatic sense of timing for European market readiness.
Community that builds trust
2024 saw the first national CAN community gathering and a packed calendar of international panels, workshops, and publications with NGOs, standards bodies, and regional development agencies. In 2025, the CAN community joined forces with Invest-NL (government backed investment) and the APROVALS consortium (advocating smoother regulatory pathways) to organise a CANference, bringing together even more complementary networks pulling in the same direction. The aim is not hype; it is literacy for regulators, financiers, farmers, students, and consumers so we can discuss benefits and risks on the same facts.
Why it works: Open and efficient
The heart of the Dutch approach is openness with discipline. Open-access infrastructure reduces duplication, raises quality, and shortens the path to first products. A national curriculum, designed with employers, gets the right technicians, engineers, data scientists, and quality professionals into the field. Core research stays connected to real bioreactors and real scale-up constraints. The entire system is stitched together by an independent, mission-focused foundation.
It’s not neat work – building shared infrastructure never is. There are frictions, misalignments, even long nights over bioreactor specs, but that’s precisely what progress looks like in real time.
The results are visible: budget expansion via private co-financing; international inbound interest; higher-than-planned course uptake; a pipeline of PhDs/EngDs; and operational nodes for cell culture and precision fermentation that de-risk the jump from lab to production plant. In short: capacity.
A European opportunity, if we make the right moves
If Europe wants food security, diversity, and sovereignty in the proteins that will power our future, we should treat food biotech as a strategic capability. Three practical steps would unlock outsized value:
- Keep ‘food’ inside the biotech focus. EU biotech strategies and funding lines should explicitly include food applications, right next to health and industrial. That unlocks scale-up equipment, bioprocess talent, and shared QA/standards across sectors efficiently.
- Give EFSA a clearer, faster mandate for food biotech. We’re not asking for shortcuts on safety; we ask for clarity and throughput. Fit-for-purpose guidance, predictable timelines, and resourced review workflows for cultivated foods and precision-fermented ingredients. This is the single greatest lever Europe controls to convert its research base into safe, competitive products.
- Co-fund open-access infrastructure and mobility. Support networks of open facilities (like CaS and BFF) across Member States, plus cross-border calls and fellowships that let students, PhDs/EngDs, and SMEs move where the equipment and expertise are. Europe excels when it connects its strong nodes.
What CAN offers and what we invite
CAN is a platform, not a gatekeeper. We co-ordinate tastings, steward community, and align education, research, and scale-up so that any capable team can progress faster. The open-access facilities are designed to serve start-ups, scale-ups, and established food producers; the courses are designed to feed those facilities with skilled people; and the research programme is designed to push down the real bottlenecks industry faces.
We invite agencies, regions, and foundations across Europe to expand, link and replicate this model: build your node, connect your curricula, co-fund your open-access capacity, and plug into a pan-European network that can run safe tastings, validate processes, and scale production responsibly. If we do this, Europe will not just debate the future of cell ag, it will make it.
And if we do not? The science will still progress, and the insights will still matter. But the products, factories, and jobs will likely crystallise somewhere else. The choice is ours.
Please note, this article will also appear in the 24th edition of our quarterly publication.
