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From design objects to value chains: Operationalizing Ethical Frameworks Across the Innovation Cycle of Cellular Agriculture

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Juan David López Taborda

Juan David is a PhD candidate in the Biotechnology and Society section at the Biotechnology Department in TU Delft. His research aims to develop an inclusive innovation approach tailored to cellular agriculture, combining bioprocess design, sustainability assessment, and ethical reflections. The project focuses on identifying critical design decisions, understanding how these influence socio-technical and environmental sustainability, and developing methods to embed stakeholder perspectives throughout the innovation cycle. Using participatory methodologies and integral sustainability assessment, the research generates practical guidelines and tools to support researchers, engineers, and policymakers in designing value chains that align with societal values and contribute to a just and responsible transition towards a sustainable food production. 

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Abstract

Cellular Agriculture (CA) refers to a set of disruptive innovations framed as a pathway to sustainable food systems. Due to their broad sociotechnical implications, responsible development of CA technologies requires a systemic ethical lens. However, methodological frameworks aimed to integrate societal values in technology development -such as inclusive innovation, Value Sensitive Design, and the Capability Approach- remain difficult to operationalize. These approaches often assume a delimited design object, and defined intervention points, conditions that do not align with the evolving and distributed nature of CA systems. Moreover, design decisions in the CA innovation system are often shaped by techno-economic constraints and existing innovation trajectories.
From our experience in CA research, we find that the operationalization of inclusive ethical frameworks depends on the stage of the innovation cycle and, consequently, on the level at which the design is addressed.  In early stages, ethical reflection is oriented to imaginaries, expectations, and sustainability assumptions that guide the future of food systems. As technologies move toward scale-up and commercialization, ethical concerns shift toward system-level questions, including governance, power, participation, and distribution of risks and benefits. 

As the CA Innovation Systems become more articulated, applying ethical frameworks at the level of the value chain -rather than at the level of product or process design- can enable the incorporation of stakeholder values, capabilities, and concerns into relevant decision-making processes. Aligning ethical frameworks with the innovation cycle thus shifts the problem from “which values to include” to “where and when values can meaningfully shape design decisions”. At the same time, this shift introduces new tensions by dispersing responsibility across actors and complicating the translation of ethical insights into action. 

Part of panel The limits and opportunities of collaboration: finding our role as SSH researchers in transdisciplinary consortia - part 1