The Food and Drug Administration has declared lab-grown meat products developed by a California company safe for human consumption, paving the way for their debut in American restaurants and grocery stores.
The agency’s decision on Wednesday applies to cultured chicken produced by Upside Foods, but is likely to bring products from one of dozens of companies seeking lab-grown meat in America.
The regulatory approval comes at a time of concern about agriculture’s impact on climate change, but also as consumers largely abandon their brief pandemic flirtation with plant-based alternatives to beef and chicken.
The Food and Drug Administration has declared lab-grown meat products developed by a California company safe for human consumption, paving the way for their debut in American restaurants and grocery stores.
The agency’s decision on Wednesday applies to cultured chicken produced by Upside Foods, but is likely to bring products from one of dozens of companies seeking lab-grown meat in America. Above: An overview of the Upside Foods laboratory
Upside Foods, formerly known as Memphis Meats, harvests cells from viable animal tissue and grows edible flesh under controlled conditions in bioreactors. The company says this product will be identical to conventionally raised chickens.
“The FDA’s premarket consultation with the company included an evaluation of the company’s production process and the cultured cell material made by the production process, including the establishment of cell lines and cell banks. , manufacturing controls and all components and inputs,” the regulatory agency said in a statement.
The agency also said it was already in contact with several companies about various other types of foods produced from cell lines grown in a lab.
Costa Yiannoulis, managing partner of Synthesis Capital, the world’s largest food tech fund, told the Washington Post, “We will look at this as the day the food system really started to change. The United States is the first significant market to have approved this – it’s seismic and revolutionary.
Yiannoulis also told the newspaper that while his company’s technology is transferable to other animal species, each product will need to be separately approved by regulators.
He estimated that after approval from the Ministry of Agriculture, it would still be months before his chicken could be on supermarket shelves.
Advocates of alternative and plant-based meats believe this approval is a positive step, but whether consumers will largely adapt their behavior remains to be seen.
“The FDA’s premarket consultation with the company included an evaluation of the company’s production process and the cultured cell material made by the production process, including the establishment of cell lines and cell banks. , manufacturing controls and all components and inputs,” the regulatory agency said in a statement.
Costa Yiannoulis, managing partner of Synthesis Capital, the world’s largest food tech fund, told the Washington Post, “We will look at this as the day the food system really started to change. The US is the first significant market to approve this – it’s seismic and groundbreaking’
Two of the best-known plant-based meat companies, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, are having tough years – the latter seeing its stock fall 75% and having to make layoffs after consumers started buying beef and chicken again after the disappearance of concerns related to the Covid pandemic. a way.
“The FDA uses the same regulatory review process as biotech crops, which has not resulted in widespread consumer trust or universal market acceptance,” biotech project manager Gregory Jaffe told The Post. at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
According to the USDA, each company that manufactures these products must obtain approval from each agency, whether or not it follows the same production method as a company that has received approval, the USDA said in a statement. .
“The FDA uses the same regulatory review process as biotech crops, which has not resulted in widespread consumer trust or universal market acceptance,” said Gregory Jaffe, biotech project director at the Center. for Science in the Public Interest.
Two of the best-known plant-based meat companies, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, are having tough years – the latter seeing its shares plummet 75%. Above: Another Upside Foods product
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