Comments submitted to USDA over how best to label meat and poultry made from animal cells grown outside of animals reflect the challenge facing US regulators as they seek to nail down nomenclature in this nascent market as startups in the space edge closer to commercialization.
Six weeks after the publication of an article arguing that cell-cultured meat faces “intractable technical challenges at food scale,” industry pioneer UPSIDE Foods has opened what it claims is the “most advanced cultivated meat production facility in the world” in Emeryville, California, and insists that growing meat from animal cells – outside of an animal - is “not only viable, but inevitable.”
“The potential growth and beneficial impacts of cell-cultured meat and seafood are significant,” but only if the public can have confidence that these products are produced sustainably and safely, which will require ongoing scrutiny of environmental claims, and would ideally require firms to submit food additive petitions, says nonprofit environmental advocacy group The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).