USDA gives final green light to cell-cultured meat
Listen 4 min Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share
The Agriculture Department on Wednesday gave the green light to three California-based companies to begin producing and selling lab-grown chicken in the United States, bringing the no-slaughter protein a step closer to American dinner plates. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The USDA announced that it issued grants of inspection to Upside Foods, Good Meat and Good Meat’s manufacturing partner, Joinn Biologics, the first companies aiming to bring the much-awaited product to the American market.
These companies harvest cells from viable animal tissue and grow edible flesh under controlled conditions in bioreactors, flesh they say will be identical to that raised conventionally. Alternatives to traditional animal agriculture are seen as a way to mitigate climate change, although just how much it will improve upon traditional ranching is a matter of debate, in part because the impact of how such a fledgling industry scales up is hard to predict.
Advertisement
Wednesday’s news followed an announcement this month that the labels of Good Meat and Upside Foods had been approved by the USDA — the agency has approved the term “cell-cultivated chicken” for packaging. And in November, the Food and Drug Administration declared a meat product developed by Upside to be safe for human consumption, paving the way for products derived from real animal cells, but that don’t require an animal to be slaughtered, to be sold in U.S. grocery stores and restaurants.
Dozens of major food companies are eager to debut cultivated meat to the American public. Singapore has been the only country in which these products are legally sold to consumers.
U.S. law requires all commercially sold meat and poultry to undergo routine inspections for safety and proper labeling. To accomplish this, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) places inspectors in slaughterhouses and processing plants — and, for the first time in history, will assign inspectors to cultivated meat and poultry facilities.
“Applications are approved following a rigorous process, which includes assessing a firm’s food safety system,” a USDA spokeswoman said. “Based on this review, FSIS has issued the first three grants of inspection to establishments producing FSIS-regulated products derived from animal cells. After an establishment receives a grant of inspection, FSIS conducts inspection activities at the facility at least once per shift to verify the production of safe and properly labeled product.”
Upside’s chief executive, Uma Valeti, said this marks a paradigm shift in meat production and is a milestone the company has worked toward since 2015. The company plans for its products to be first available at a restaurant: Bar Crenn in San Francisco.
“We’re also running a social media contest for a chance to be among the first in the U.S. to try our cultivated chicken,” Valeti said.
Advertisement
Good Meat will also debut in restaurants, with acclaimed chef José Andrés ready to serve it at one of his dining rooms in D.C.
“Launching our cultivated chicken in a restaurant setting is the perfect way to introduce consumers to real meat that’s made in a whole new way. Being able to do that with José Andrés, one of the most respected chefs in the world, is a dream come true,” said Andrew Noyes, the company’s head of global communications.
Noyes said that restaurants in Singapore have been serving the company’s cultivated chicken since 2020 and that restaurant chefs are an effective introduction to a new food category for many consumers who might be a little squeamish.
But there are other reasons restaurants are a good place to start: scale and price. It may be years before these companies are ready to supply products to regional grocery store chains that can compete on price with traditional animal agriculture products.
Advertisement
Nonetheless, said Dan Glickman, a Good Meat advisory board member and a former congressman and secretary of agriculture, Wednesday’s approval demonstrates that the United States is a global leader in the alternative protein space. He applauded the USDA’s commitment to accelerating agricultural innovation and economic opportunity.
Even the traditional meat industry, which has sparred with alt-meat over label language and other issues, is encouraged by how the two food regulatory agencies have managed this entirely new food group.
“We have worked closely with Upside Foods to create a level regulatory playing field ensuring USDA had a role to play in oversight of both traditional meat and cell-cultivated products,” said Julie Anna Potts, chief executive of the North American Meat Institute. “We look forward to continuing our work with Upside on future innovations.”
Gift this article Gift Article
Source: The Washington Post
