President Biden’s Food and Drug Administration for the first time approved lab-grown chicken for sale in the United States.
It looks like chicken and tastes like chicken, but it’s lab-grown meat from animal cells.
Cultivated chicken will be tested next month at a 3-star Michelin restaurant in San Francisco.
The fake chicken, grown in a laboratory by Upside Foods, was declared safe to eat by the FDA last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s nearly time to eat cultivated meat,” Eric Schulze, Upside Food’s vice president of global scientific and regulatory affairs, tweeted. “Our Upside chicken is coming to consumers very soon.”
The company celebrated the FDA’s approval with champagne glass emojis. Investors in Upside Foods include Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and meat giants Smithfield and Tyson Foods, which tried to grow its own laboratory meat.
There is optimism that Americans will embrace “no kill” meat because some people will eat anything.
Meat products grown from animal cells in a laboratory is a first for Americans.
By comparison, consumers lost interest in plant-based Beyond Meat burgers after the company’s successful stock market debut in 2019.
Beyond Meat’s sales cratered after chief operating officer Doug Ramsey was arrested last year on suspicion of biting a man’s nose during a fight in Arkansas. Ramsey soon left the company.
Americans may run out of choices if the price of meat continues to escalate. A year from now, meat, chicken and eggs may be so expensive that only the 1% can afford to enjoy the fine dining experience.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the process of growing meat from cells involves putting poultry and livestock cells into stainless-steel tanks known as bioreactors. The cells are fed nutrients and oxygen and quickly multiply before being harvested and formed into meat products.
Former employees of Upside Foods say the process has not gone well for the company.
“It’s the ‘fake it till you make it’ principle,” said Samir Qurashi, a former Upside employee.
The former employee said the company struggled to make enough meat for lab analysis and tastings last year. According to WSJ, Upside Foods scrambled for years to grow whole cuts of meat in its bioreactors.
So they switched from growing meat in bioreactors to 2-liter plastic bottles. Hundreds of disposable bottles are required to make a few filets of chicken.
Upside Foods also battled contamination in its labs. Traces of rat DNA once contaminated a chicken cell line that was disposed of.
Italy proposed a ban on lab-grown meat, mainly to protect Italian farmers who provide quality meat to fine dining restaurants.
The Italian government also voiced concerns about the quality and nutritional value of meat cultivated from animal cells and grown in a lab like cancer cells.
