Katie Noble
PhD Researcher

Profile

Biography

Katie is a United Nations GEO-7 Fellow and PhD researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute and Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at University of York.

My research analyses potential future pathways for the environmental and socio-cultural outcomes of scaling-up the cellular agriculture industry. We have now modified almost every inch of Earth’s land surface to produce food, with over 75% of all agricultural land being used specifically for meat and milk production. Humanity’s taste for meat has driven the over-exploitation of Earth’s finite natural resources to such an extent that we have created a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, inducing the current global biodiversity and climate crises, and critically endangering our ability to continue producing food.

Growing meat in bioreactors, rather than on animals’ bodies, is a potential solution for meeting the ever-growing global demand for
meat products whilst negating the environmental and animal welfare issues generated by our current systems. With societal acceptance, cultured meat could be a very disruptive technology, potentially capable of transforming global food production systems entirely. My research adopts a holistic and highly interdisciplinary approach to analysing the environmental and socio-cultural dimensions of cultured meat, incorporating data, methods, and ideas from a range of academic disciplines in both the natural and social sciences. Through this research, I aim to generate knowledge useful to both industry stakeholders and policymakers regarding the optimisation of cultured meat production systems and supply chains for increased sustainability and global social equity outcomes.