Lab-grown meat is set to be soon available to US consumers for the first time after the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) granted permission to two businesses to make what they call “cultivated chicken”.
According to CNN, Upside Foods and Good Meat are the two companies that have got the green light from the US regulators to start producing cell-based chicken that has been grown in large metal vats (large containers like the ones seen at beer breweries) using a cluster of sample animal cells.
The move sets forth an era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste. Unlike plant-based protein popularly known as “mock meat”, this will be actual meat produced in the lab instead of farms.
“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat, reported AP.
Earlier, the US Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.
Upside Foods will produce the lab-made meat in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first company to do so, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays.
It is still unclear as to when the cultivated meat will be available at grocery stores in the US as they are much more expensive than regular meat. They can also not yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, according to Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at the University of California Berkeley, as reported by AP.
The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside 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.
More than 150 companies around the world are focusing on making meat from cells, not only chicken but pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment.
