Laboratory-grown chicken meat receives the first FDA approval to be classified as safe
The way you eat chicken may not change, but how your chicken is produced may soon look unrecognizable.
For the first time this week, the US Food and Drug Administration ruled that a lab-grown meat — Upside Foods’ cultured chicken — is safe to eat, calling it “cultured chicken cell material.” It described rather unattractively that the company had “multicellular tissue for use in human food” and that the cultured chicken cells had “muscle and connective tissue properties.”
The meat, unlike the variety of a slaughtered animal, is cultured from animal cells and grown in the lab. There’s still a long way to go before you can buy it from your local grocer, but Wednesday’s green light was an important regulatory move, and the implications of the technology are fascinating.
From an ecological point of view, the process has several advantages. For example, less land is required than with traditional methods, which could reduce deforestation and biodiversity loss — think all of the jungle habitat cleared for cattle grazing. And compared to slaughterhouses, it uses less water and pollutes less. That helps explain why Leonard DiCaprio, a major environmentalist and not just a Hollywood celebrity, has invested in a number of cultured meat startups, including Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms.
Of course, the thought of meat grown in huge tanks is unappealing. But the process could produce cleaner, safer meat than sprawling slaughterhouses, which are particularly vulnerable to contamination from E. coli, salmonella and other pathogens.
Laboratory-grown meat could also address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Overuse of antibiotics in factory farms is leading to more antibiotic-resistant human infections, leading to “longer hospital stays, higher medical costs and increased mortality,” according to the World Health Organization.
At the moment, lab-grown meat is not competitive with the traditional variety. On the other hand, the same was initially true of plant-based meat alternatives, but today you can pick up a six-pack of Impossible “Burger” patties at Target for under $13.49.
Some people may have ethical issues with using fetal bovine serum — obtained by collecting blood from the unborn calves of pregnant cows after slaughter — to produce lab-grown meat. But several companies are trying to move away from that and towards animal-free alternatives.
The regulatory process still has a lot to do. Upside Foods has yet to be cleared by the Food Safety and Inspection Service, part of the US Department of Agriculture.
But “this milestone marks a major step towards a new era in meat production,” CEO Uma Valeti said in a statement. “I’m excited that US consumers will soon be able to eat delicious meat that’s grown directly from animal cells.”
If you can’t wait for produce to hit shelves in America, head to Singapore, where lab-grown meat is already legal for sale. Last year, GOOD Meat, another cultured meat start-up, said in the city-state that a Cantonese restaurant at a JW Marriott resort would begin replacing the meat in traditional steamed chicken dumplings with the cultured variety.
“Meat without killing animals will replace conventional meat at some point in our lives. The faster we get there, the healthier our planet will be,” said Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just, GOOD Meat’s parent company, at the time.
Other restaurants and big-name chefs have since agreed to cook with lab-raised meat, and in June GOOD Meat broke ground on what will be the largest cultured meat factory in Asia.
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