File photo of nuggets made from lab-grown chicken meat. , photo credit: AFP
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a meat product grown from animal cells for human consumption for the first time, the agency announced on Wednesday.
UPSIDE Foods, a company that makes cell-cultured chicken by harvesting cells from live animals and using the cells to grow meat in stainless steel tanks, will be able to market its products once they are inspected. We Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in an FDA release.
“The world is experiencing a Meal The (FDA) is committed to revolutionizing and supporting innovation in the food supply,” FDA Commissioner Robert M. Calif and Susan Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a statement.
The FDA said in documents released Wednesday that it had reviewed the company’s data and asked no further questions about the company’s conclusion that its product is safe for human consumption.
“We are thrilled with the FDA’s announcement,” David Kay, director of communications for UPSIDE, said in an email. “This historic move paves the way for our market.”
The review is not technically an approval and applies only to UPSIDE products, although the agency is open to working with other firms developing cultured animal cell food, the FDA said in a release.
The USDA and FDA together regulate cell-cultured meat under a 2019 agreement between the two agencies. The USDA will oversee the processing and labeling of cell-cultured meat products.
Along with awareness of the high greenhouse gas emissions of raising livestock, the demand for alternatives to farmed meat has increased. Cultured chicken was served to attendees of this year’s COP27 climate conference in Egypt.