This comes despite concerns over new cell culture technology
U.S. regulators have approved the nation’s first lab-grown meat for sale—chicken products grown from animal cells.
The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) on Wednesday gave the OK for two California companies to sell their chicken products to restaurants, and eventually, supermarkets.
Startups Upside Foods, formerly known as Memphis Meats, and Good Meat, a subsidiary of Eat Just Inc., made announcements of their USDA approvals on Wednesday.
The USDA decisions mean that from now on, the agency will inspect the companies’ cultured meat facilities, just as it already does for regular meat processing plants.
The two companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants. Upside Foods has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.
The companies and others like them say their new tech-enabled meat products will be able to feed humans without killing animals, and without the environmental impacts associated with grazing, growing feed for animals, and animal waste.
Cell Culture Technology and Concerns
Upside Foods and Good Meat sell what they refer to as “cultivated chicken” or “cultivated meat.” Their meat will be labeled as “cell-cultivated chicken” when sold to consumers.
Cell-cultivated meat—also known as cell-cultured meat, as well as cell-based or lab-grown protein—is made via animal cell culture technology.
It involves taking cells from a living animal, a fertilized animal egg, or a special bank of stored cells, and putting that into a culture medium so the cells can be fed. Some companies also use animal stem cells.
The medium is subsequently placed into large tanks known as bioreactors or cultivators, to help foster the cells’ growth. In the tanks is a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins, and other elements cells need to grow.
Most forms of lab-grown meat, including that of Upside Foods and Good Meat, are made with “immortalized cell lines.”
