Lab-Grown Meat Receives a Green Signal from the FDA

Lab-grown chicken passed the first level that is needed to bring the product to supermarkets in the United States. The US Food and Drug Administration has finally given the green light to meat grown from cells, and the cultivated chicken product by Californian startup Upside Foods is safe to eat.

“Advancements in cell culture technology are enabling food developers to use animal cells obtained from livestock, poultry, and seafood in the production of food, with these products expected to be ready for the US market in the near future,” the FDA said. It added that it is ready to work with additional firms developing cultured meat to ensure their products are ‘safe and lawful.’

Singapore is the first and only nation to approve sales of lab-grown meat, a product made by Eat Just, which happened two years ago.

Currently, the hurdle in this field is finessing the technology and making it affordable so that this cell-based meat can be turned into a mass-market product. While Upside Food’s chicken has been cleared for human consumption, it has not yet received approval for sale in the country. The product still needs to meet other requirements from the FDA and the US department of agriculture before it can enter the market.

“This is a critical milestone toward the future of food,” Bruce Friedrich, president of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on expanding plant-based and cultivated meat, said in a statement Wednesday. “Cultivated meat will soon be available to consumers in the US who desire their favorite foods made more sustainably, with production requiring a fraction of the land and water of conventional meat when produced at scale.”

The livestock industry has come under increased environmental scrutiny since cattle are a big source of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas. The food system drew more attention at the United Nations climate change conference, under way in Egypt, than in previous years, as per a report by the United Nations environmental program.

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Uma Valeti, chief executive of Upside Foods, said the FDA decision was “the biggest moment in the history of our company,” which was founded in 2015. “People love meat, and we want to preserve the choice, but do it in a more efficient and humane process,” Mr. Valeti said.

Cultivated meat is often grown in a vat by copying stem cells extracted from a live animal or from the ovaries of a newly slaughtered animal. The vat is also filled with serum containing amino acids, sugars, and other nutrients needed for cells to grow.

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Valeti said the cells are ‘like starter dough’ and, after being grown for around three weeks, are harvested, and shaped into forms familiar to consumers, like a chicken breast. Even though plant-based meats are gaining popularity, the researchers have noted that the sodium content varies depending on the product type. The sodium content of plant-based mince was about six times that of its meat-based equivalent (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Plant-Based Meat Substitutes in the Flexitarian Age: An Audit of Products on Supermarket Shelves

Go to source).

Artificial meat can provide us with the same nutritional value while also combating the environmental issues that cattle are causing all over the world.

Reference:

1. Plant-Based Meat Substitutes in the Flexitarian Age: An Audit of Products on Supermarket Shelves - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31671655/)

Source-Medindia