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This month, Animal Charity Evaluators spoke with Joanne Tunna, Chief Operating Officer at Cellular Agriculture Australia (CAA), a nonprofit working to accelerate the development of cell-based and other alternative proteins as part of a more sustainable, humane food system.
With over 15 years of experience spanning government, not-for-profit, and private sectors, Jo brings deep expertise in strategy, project management, business development, and corporate sustainability. Since joining CAA in 2021, she has dedicated her career to supporting impact-driven organizations and advancing solutions to decarbonize our food system.
In this interview, Jo discusses CAA’s role in shaping the future of cellular agriculture in Australia, the importance of building a strong ecosystem for scientific and industry innovation, and how alternative proteins can help create a more sustainable and compassionate world for animals.
Cellular Agriculture Australia (CAA) is a registered Australian nonprofit and the leading advocacy organisation for Australia’s cellular agriculture sector. Our mission is to build the ecosystem to position Australia as a leader in cellular agriculture and food biomanufacturing. Cellular agriculture involves the use of cells and innovative biotechnologies (e.g., cell cultivation, precision fermentation) to biomanufacture a range of ingredients, food, and agricultural products. This suite of technologies is most commonly being used to produce meat, seafood, dairy proteins, and fats derived directly from animal cells rather than through the conventional farming and slaughter of animals.
CAA is driven by the belief that cellular agriculture has the potential to reduce reliance on conventional agricultural production methods, strengthen supply chain resilience and food security, and help to meet growing global demand for protein and other products—sustainably and ethically.
CAA’s strategic priorities accelerate the desirability, viability, and feasibility of cellular agriculture to drive the commercialisation and availability of products, ultimately benefiting farmed animal welfare, food security, climate, and public health. More specifically, our work aims to:
Australia has a strong agricultural industry fuelled by domestic and international demand. It ranks third globally for per capita meat consumption, and is among the world’s largest producers of beef and lamb—providing a significant opportunity for displacement and reduced reliance on conventional agriculture.
Our work accelerates the commercialisation of products produced using cellular agriculture technologies. These products have the potential to substantially reduce farmed animal suffering by offering desirable alternatives—often with an equivalent taste and sensory experience to conventional products—that do not rely on raising and slaughtering animals. With the potential for ingredients produced using cellular agriculture technologies to be integrated across a wide range of food categories, the opportunity isn’t confined to one product or species—it’s a systems-level shift that expands ethical consumer choices and reduces reliance on conventional production methods.
Australian companies are already developing cultivated meat from sheep, pigs, and quail, as well as precision-fermented dairy ingredients. Academic groups are advancing work on cultivated seafood, and one company is developing alternatives to fetal bovine serum, helping remove one of the most ethically-challenging inputs in cell culture. Notably, Vow is selling cultivated quail products, including foie gras, in restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne (as well as in Singapore, where they also have regulatory approval)—directly displacing demand for a product with severe welfare concerns.
Importantly, ingredients produced using cellular agriculture technologies are also being used to address taste and sensory shortcomings in plant-based proteins. By enabling a broader range of high-quality, desirable protein products, these technologies have the potential to dramatically expand the market share of alternative proteins. In doing so, they could significantly reduce reliance on conventional animal agriculture and thus spare large amounts of farmed animal suffering.
In 2025, we made significant progress raising awareness of cellular agriculture across key Australian Government departments, where the sector has historically received limited attention. However, federal-level support remains limited. As a sector, the immediate challenge is to develop and present a unified, credible, and compelling strategy that quantifies the national opportunity and outlines the scale of investment required. To address this, a key initiative in 2026 is to lead the development of this sector-wide strategy in collaboration with leading industry and research partners. This plan will guide both public and private investment to accelerate Australia’s cellular agriculture sector from pilot-stage research through to scalable commercialisation.
ACE has provided a general support grant to CAA. This funding helps with leadership salaries over 2025–26, complementing other secured funding that supports our programmatic work. This core support has allowed our leadership team to focus on strategic priorities, build key government and industry relationships, and maintain the operational capacity needed to deliver impact effectively and sustainably.
Cellular agriculture is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create true systems-level change for farmed animals. It’s a deep-tech field with a long road to commercialisation, but one with extraordinary potential to reduce suffering at an unprecedented scale.
The timeline to impact is medium to long term, which is why sustained support and acceleration are so critical now. The decisions we make today will determine whether this technology can meaningfully transform our food system tomorrow.
Despite the challenges, CAA is energised and committed to advancing this work through 2026 and beyond.
