As soon as regulators from the US Department of Agriculture decide how to label ‘cultivated’ meat for public sale and inspect facilities that produce it, the lab-grown meat will be available in grocery stores and restaurants.
Upside Foods, a California company, gained approval for its product after the FDA said it had evaluated the information submitted by Upside and it had “no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion.”
It appears there was no independent testing.
A professor from UC Davis said that cells used to create meat in a lab can technically be labeled pre-cancerous, but it would be “virtually impossible” to contract cancer from eating another animal, even if the meat contained cancer.
Regulators from the US Department of Agriculture are now deciding how to label meat ‘cultivated’ in a laboratory for public sale and inspect facilities that produce it.
The guidelines are expected sometime this year — a final hurdle before the products can hit store shelves.
Cultivated, or cultured-cell, meat is grown in energy intensive steel bioreactors from animal stem cells that are fed a mixture of vitamins, fats, sugars and oxygen.
The process results in real meat tissue without having to raise or slaughter an animal.
Good Meat was also approved by the FDA without questions.
Upside has attracted hing-profile financing from Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Whole Foods founder John Mackey.
UPSIDE says it can produce 50,000 pounds of cultivated chicken a year using current technology in its $50-million facility.
Valeti said Upside will need significant additional investment to scale up to 400,000 pounds a year — but that’s the goal.
**Source: Lab-Grown Chicken Meat Set to Hit Grocery Stores, Restaurants this Year | Principia Scientific Intl.