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A recent White House statement is seen by businesses producing lab-grown
beef, chicken, and fish as a hint that consuming meat produced without the
usage of animals is about to become legal in the US.
According to Eric Schulze, vice president of product and regulatory at
Upside Foods, a cultured meat firm, the industry is "laser focused on
commercial-scale manufacturing, and for us, that means going into competing
with traditional meat products in volume." Within a year, the company hopes
to start selling its meat in the US.
President Joe Biden's
executive order
on biotechnology and biomanufacturing, which analysts think might persuade
government agencies to permit commercial sales of meat created from an
animal's cells, sparked a strong response from the traditional meat and
poultry business last month.
Don Schiefelbein, president of the business association National
Cattlemen's Beef Association, called it "a smack in the face of cow-calf
producers and farmers across the country."
Just two years ago, Singapore saw the sale of the first lab-grown chicken
nuggets on a commercial scale. That remains the only nation where meat
produced synthetically using animal cells is consumed. Startups and a few
established food firms in the US claim, however, that their goods are ready
to be sold; businesses in Israel claim that their products are nearly ready
for sale; and China has hinted that it may permit the sale of lab-grown meat
within the next five years.
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Producers of lab-grown meat claim that their product can essentially
eliminate animal slaughter, reduce carbon emissions and agricultural runoff
common to the livestock business, and provide meat that is genetically
identical to what Americans are used to eating from cows, chickens, pigs,
and fish.
However, farmers and ranchers are skeptical that the product really belongs
in the category of meat.
Lia Biondo, an associate at Western Skies Strategies, a public relations
and lobbying firm that works with the US Cattlemen's Association and other
agriculture groups, said: "It should be differentiated somehow, some way, so
the consumer can know whether they're consuming something that was grown on
a farm or ranch—or something that was grown in a petri dish."
What It Does
Plant-based meat has demonstrated the value of labeling in the marketing of
alternative proteins. Impossible Foods established its reputation by selling
vegan "burgers," "sausages," and "pork," and said last year that its
fourth-quarter retail revenue increased by 85%. Additionally, Impossible
fought back against a cattlemen's association that sought to have
meat-specific phrases removed from its labeling, just like firms that
produce cultured meat.
Genetically speaking, laboratory-produced meat is meat, not plant protein
packed into patties that resemble beef or chicken in appearance and
flavor.
The methods involved in generating farmed meat are the same regardless of
the firm or kind of meat: take samples of an animal's cells, put them in a
bioreactor, feed the cells, and then harvest the cells after they have
multiplied into meat.
A biopsy can be used to get starter cells from a living animal, which can
then be "banked" to eventually kickstart various growth processes. Companies
frequently retain a bank of cell lines on hand to draw from as needed since
each bioreactor requires beginning cells.
Nutrients like vitamins and amino acids are supplied to the cells. Once
they have multiplied, they develop into the animal muscles and tissues that
we know as flesh.
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Growing chicken begins with a master bank of cell lines that are frozen for
about a week before entering a bioreactor, or "cultivator," according to
California-based Upside Foods, which was launched in 2015 and bills itself
as the world's first cultured meat firm. A growth medium is provided to
cells when they start to replicate and provides them with the glucose,
vitamins, and other nutrients they require to be alive and reproduce, which
usually takes one to two weeks.
The company Upside has developed cultivators that can grow entire, chopped
chickens. Scaffolding, an edible surface where cells may multiply, is used
by several different lab-grown meat producers. Depending on the kind of
chicken, Upside's differentiation into specific muscle and fat tissues can
take a few days to two weeks.
The chicken from Upside is ready for consumption after three to five days
of formulation and packing. Although it doesn't resemble a leg or wing,
farm-raised chicken flesh is physiologically similar to it, and it may be
formed into items like boneless chicken "breast" or chicken nuggets. It
tastes the same, according to Upside.
According
to Upside, the harvest time for their chicken is as low as two weeks. On
contrast, a live chicken in an industrial farm is often put to death no
later than six weeks. While the length of the lab growing procedure varies
depending on the producer and the type of meat, businesses like Upside note
that their method may be more effective than conventional chicken.
The majority of the about 100 new businesses entering the market in the US
are startups, but
JBS
SA, the largest meat producer in the world, is spending $100 million in
cultured meat. In addition to having a research and development facility for
grown protein in Brazil and a pilot facility in Spain, it has purchased the
startup company Biotech Foods that produced cultured meat.
Governmental Regulation
Although the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department
agreed in 2018 to share oversight of the potential market, the US does not
now permit the sale of meat that has not been cut from an animal that was
previously alive. It's still unclear how that really appears.
The Agriculture Department awarded $10 million to Tufts University to
establish a center for excellence in cellular agriculture, and it published
an
advanced notice of proposed regulation
on the labeling of goods made with farmed beef and poultry the previous
year.
FDA and USDA will "continue to work in collaboration to develop more
detailed procedures to facilitate coordination of our shared regulatory
oversight, including developing coordinated labeling principles for
livestock/poultry and seafood products made from cultured animal cells,"
according to a spokesperson for the FDA. Regarding the launch of the market,
we cannot make any assumptions.
The Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA also stated that the
organization is working on drafting a labeling regulation but that it is
still too early to comment on a schedule.
The FDA will control the collection of animal cells after the food is
permitted for sale, and the Agriculture Department will be in charge of
controlling the packing and processing of the final beef products.
According to Emily Broad Leib, founding director of the Harvard Law School
Food Law and Policy Clinic, "but they still are trying to figure out
precisely how that split looks, and I believe it's going to be difficult for
firms when they have to go through it."
A Covington & Burling LLP attorney who has worked on food regulation,
Deepti Kulkarni, saw a similar response.
Regarding the unified regulatory framework, she questioned "How is it going
to operate in practice?" "They've already indicated that further information
is needed,"
What Exactly Is Meat?
At a cost of more than $300,000, a Dutch pharmacologist debuted the first
lab-grown burger patty in 2013. Startups are now perfecting lab-grown
steaks, salmon, foie gras, meatballs, sausages, and other foods. They claim
that in the future, these foods will be priced similarly to farm-raised
meat.
How customers will be able to distinguish between the two remains to be
seen.
The US Cattlemen's Association petitioned the USDA's Meals Safety and
Inspection Service, the agency's enforcement arm, to prohibit the use of
terminology like "meat" and "beef" in lab-grown goods. The association wants
these names to be reserved for food from killed animals. The government is
still contemplating what to term this slaughterless meat even after it was
rejected.
The majority of the lab-grown meat business feels that their goods should
be branded differently from regular meat, arguing that consumers will prefer
their meat for its novelty and advantages to the environment. The word
"cultivated" beef is chosen by many in the industry since it is transparent
but not repulsive in their eyes.
At the school's recent Cultivated Meat and Alternative Proteins Summit,
Denneal Jamison-McClung, head of the UC Davis Biotechnology Program, stated,
"We need to create trust with customers that way.
