While all eyes were on the Titan, the US approved lab-grown meat

Chicken grown in a lab from cultivated cells has been approved for sale in the US, and no, we’re not talking about chickens raised in labs, says Nigel.

It’s been over a month since everyone and their grandmother became experts on submersibles with the implosion of the Titan. While that was happening, however, one headline that quietly slipped by most people’s attention was the FDA’s approval of lab-grown or “guilt-free” meat. Yes, chicken grown in a lab from cultivated cells has been approved for sale in the US, and no, we’re not talking about chickens raised in labs.

The process involves harvesting stem cells from chicken eggs and then culturing them in a stainless steel vat full of a nutrient mixture until they grow and produce the protein that we refer so fondly to as chicken. An interesting note here is that Singapore became the first country to approve lab-grown meat back in 2020.

No further questions

So far, two producers of lab-grown meat, Good Meat, and Upside Foods have received “no further questions” letters from the FDA which basically means the FDA is content with the manufacturing process and the product. This approval is granted by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), from which a spokesperson was quoted stating such grants “are approved following a rigorous process, which includes assessing a firm’s food safety system.”

Additionally, in an interview with Health, Maia Keerie, former communications manager at Good Food Institute said “The FDA did not identify any features of the cells as described that would render them different from other animal cells with respect to safety for food use.”

In a recent taste test at Upside Foods’ 70,000 sq foot facility, visitors were indulged with chef Jess Weaver’s cultivated chicken fillet cooked in butter, white wine, onions, tomatoes, and peppers. While reports suggest the meat looked a lot lighter than meat from slaughtered birds, it did indeed taste just like chicken. Similarly, chef Jack Tyndall’s offerings at Good Meat’s 100,000 sq foot facility included a smoked chicken salad as well as what is being called a chicken thigh served with potatoes, mushrooms, and cauliflower florets.

As we already mentioned, Good Meat was the first to receive approval from the Singapore govt, in 2020 and is already selling a “chicken bite” in a Singaporean restaurant called 1880 where a set meal costs about $17.

Food Safety and the Environment

In the same interview with Health, Maia Keerie explains how cultured chicken is safer than the slaughtered version as there are no antibiotic or fungal agents used in the production of cultured chicken. She then goes on to point out that this means cultured meat will not be contributing to disease-resistant strains of bacteria and viruses which is a serious problem we looked at in a previous post. Additionally, over 70% of antibiotics in the US are used on animals which is a staggering number.

Keerie also mentions that cultured meat has an exceptionally low microbial count compared to farm-raised chicken as the cells are carefully screened to ensure the absence of infectious diseases.

While it might look like growing chicken meat in a lab may use fewer resources than raising chickens on a farm, one study suggests all is not as it may seem. In a preprint that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, researchers at the University of California, Davis, claim that by current production methods, the environmental impact of cultured meat will be orders of magnitude higher than what we see with farm-raised animals. The main reason for this is the purification of the growth media used to propagate cells in cultured meat which is very much like a pharmaceutical process with a significant environmental footprint.

The study concludes by stating the environmental impact of cultured meat might be four to twenty times more than farm-raised animals.

Kosher, Halal, or Vegetarian?

Now since cultured meat doesn’t come from killing animals it’s interesting to see how it fits in with people’s religious beliefs or moral codes. While the Indonesian Islamic authorities ruled cultured meat to be non-halal in 2021, Mohammad Hussaini, vice president of global Halal affairs for the American Halal Foundation, says it could be considered Halal if the cells are cultivated from a slaughtered animal or if the cells are taken from wool or feathers.

Similarly, Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO and Rabbinic administrator of OU Kosher, stated cultured meat from cells taken from a kosher, unfertilized egg would be considered kosher, while cells coming from a live animal would not be permissible.

It doesn’t look like cultured meat will get a vegetarian label anytime soon as animal rights activists have been quick to point out the use of fetal bovine serum (FBS) in the growth medium, an ingredient harvested from calf fetuses.

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