Literally on Friday, the US authorities agreed on how to regulate foods cultured from animal cells. This paves the way for so-called "test tube meat" into American plates. That and look, it will come to us, too, if history moves in a spiral. The Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have agreed to jointly regulate food from cultured cells.
While the technical details remain to be finalized, the FDA will oversee the collection and differentiation of cells - when stem cells develop into specialized cells - while the USDA will oversee food production and labeling.
Test tube meat - on a plate
“This regulatory framework will leverage both the FDA's expertise in regulating cell culture and living biosystems technology and the USDA's expertise in regulating livestock and poultry products for human consumption,” the statement said. They also add that the agencies do not see the need to change the legislation on these issues.
There are already a few niche lab meat startups in the US, but production costs are very high and no one has a product ready to sell.
Proponents of "meat from a test tube" argue that eliminating the suffering associated with slaughter will reduce greenhouse gas emissions - and provide a growing population with protein.
It remains only to come to an agreement with the farms on the topic of what products can be called "meat". It can be expected that, together with FDA approval, laboratory meat production technology will receive support for further dissemination (after all, what is not prohibited is allowed).
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Ilya Khel