{"id":705992,"date":"2024-03-05T14:06:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T20:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cowsmo.com\/?p=705992"},"modified":"2024-03-05T14:06:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T20:06:23","slug":"farm-to-table-via-petri-dish-what-the-heck-should-we-call-lab-grown-meat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/?p=705992","title":{"rendered":"Farm-to-table via petri dish – What the heck should we call lab-grown meat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"So what do you call a lab-grown protein containing animal byproducts but no slaughtered animals? It\u2019s definitely not vegan, but it\u2019s not really \u201cmeat\u201d either. Or is it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, the preferred industry nomenclature is \u201ccell cultivated meat.\u201d\u00a0Marketing studies have shown consumers are fairly comfortable with this term. But is it misleading or does it give lab meat a bad rap?\u00a0That answer depends on who you ask.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What exactly is cell cultivated meat?<\/h2>\n

Cell-cultivated meat is made in a lab using animal cell samples. Dutch scientist Mark Post from Maastricht University in The Netherlands developed the first lab-grown meat product for human consumption in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, more than 150 companies across the world sell cell cultivated meat, including 43 in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

But don\u2019t expect to grab an Amsterdam lab burger just yet. The product is currently banned in The Netherlands as well as in the rest of Europe. Only the U.S., Singapore and a few other nations allow cell cultivated meat sales to consumers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this, more than $3 billion in private capital was invested in cell cultivated meat between 2016 and 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

In July 2023, Upside Foods sold the\u00a0<\/span>first lab-grown chicken<\/a><\/span>\u00a0to restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. That same month, government officials in The Netherlands authorized limited cell cultivated meat tastings held in controlled environments.<\/span><\/p>\n

No word yet on what wine it pairs best with.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s in a name? A lot more than you might think.<\/h2>\n

USDA currently allows faux meat to be marketed as either \u201ccell cultured meat\u201d or \u201ccell cultivated meat.\u201d Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety Sandra Eskin says new federal labeling rules should be coming soon. The agency has received thousands of comments on the issue. Multiple states are also drafting rules for how lab-grown meats can be marked and sold in their jurisdictions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eskin recently hosted a panel discussion on lab meat labeling during the USDA Agricultural Outlook forum in Washington. She says there have been all kinds of suggestions for what to call these meat-adjacent products. Some companies would like to simply use \u201ccultivated\u201d meat. Others prefer \u201cfake meat,\u201d \u201cimitation meat,\u201d \u201cclean meat,\u201d \u201cmanufactured meat\u201d and \u201ccell-based meat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Someone even suggested \u201cin vitro meat.\u201d (Can you say yum?)<\/span><\/p>\n

Competing agendas<\/h2>\n

A Congressional bill introduced earlier this year called the\u00a0<\/span>Fair Foods Act<\/a><\/span>\u00a0would mandate stricter labeling rules for cultivated meat. It\u2019s one of several efforts on the state and federal level supported my major agricultural interests to enact stricter standards.<\/span><\/p>\n

Madeline Cohen is a senior regulator attorney with The Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to animal products. She says the cultivated meat industry should be permitted to use familiar terms consumers prefer so long as they are accurate and not misleading.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to her, labels should also communicate to consumers the benefits of cell-cultivated meat and how they can use them. As regulatory agencies consider labeling guidelines, she believes it\u2019s important to ensure a level playing field and ensure the government isn\u2019t picking winners and losers in the marketplace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes regulations can inadvertently disparage new products or put them at a disadvantage simply because they\u2019re new and they therefore have more restrictive or specific labeling requirements than products that have been on the market for a long time,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohen says TGFI favors using \u201ccultivated meat\u201d because the process for cultivating lab meat is similar to cultivating products like tomatoes. As for differentiating from traditional meat, she says the term does exactly that since beef, poultry and pork products are not market as \u201ccultivated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian Roholm, the director of food policy for Consumer Reports, believes labels should be simple. While omitting the word \u201ccell\u201d may be a step too far, he has no issues with the term \u201ccell cultivated meat.\u201d However, he worries labels may leave out key information from the production process that\u2019s important to consumers.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, when cultivated cell chicken is created, chicken cell lines are placed in a liquid that contains fetal bovine serum. Then, an anti-clumping agent FDA previously approved as a stool softener is added. Some products may also contain material from cattle and pigs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that the cell cultured chicken products contain material that was derived from cows and pigs, it would seem that the information should be inclined on the label because it is a material fact,\u201d Ronholm says. \u201cAnd consumers certainly would not expect products to contain these materials so this information would of importance to them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He emphasized that this information would be especially important to people who avoid consuming those animals for religious reasons or personal beliefs. He also notes using animal parts calls into question the \u201ccruelty-free\u201d labels some companies use on their packaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do labels even matter?<\/h2>\n

Despite the massive investments in cell cultivated meat, the industry is likely decades away from competing with traditional agriculture, if it ever does. The process of creating lab-grown meat is still a work in progress. Even with improvements, nobody has figured out how best to distribute cultivated meat on a meaningful scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roholm points to a recent\u00a0<\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/span> article detailing widespread pessimism about cultured meat\u2019s future. While he wants the technology to work because of its potential benefits to sustainability and climate change, he wonders if all the money and effort could have been better spent addressing other food issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have been using that money to figure out how we can produce salmonella-free chicken or how we can make fresh produce safer,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating from a consumer standpoint that you see all of this for something that has had very very little impact at this point.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: Feedstuffs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So what do you call a lab-grown protein containing animal byproducts but no slaughtered animals? It\u2019s definitely not vegan, but it\u2019s not really \u201cmeat\u201d either. Or is it? Currently, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2807,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2807"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=705992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=705992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=705992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowsmo.kinsta.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=705992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}