FDA Gives First US Safety Clearance to Lab-Grown Meat

The US Food and Drug Administration has today given its first ever safety clearance to meat grown from animal cells, telling California company Upside Foods it has "no further questions" about the safety of its cultivated chicken.

It's the first time the FDA has completed a pre-market consultation for any human food made from cultured animal cells. The announcement came in a joint statement from FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf and Dr. Susan Mayne, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and it opens with a line we never expected to read from a US regulator:

The world is experiencing a food revolution and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is committed to supporting innovation in the food supply. As an example of that commitment, today we are announcing that we have completed our first pre-market consultation of a human food made from cultured animal cells.

The chicken isn't in shops just yet. Before it can be sold, Upside's production facility needs a grant of inspection from the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, and the product itself needs a USDA mark of inspection. But the FDA says it is "ready to work with additional firms" and is already in discussions with several others, including companies growing seafood from cells.

Upside Foods' founder and CEO Dr. Uma Valeti said:

This is a watershed moment in the history of food. We started UPSIDE amid a world full of skeptics, and today, we've made history again as the first company to receive a 'No Questions' letter from the FDA for cultivated meat. This milestone marks a major step towards a new era in meat production, and I'm thrilled that U.S. consumers will soon have the chance to eat delicious meat that's grown directly from animal cells.

Three-Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn has already partnered with Upside to put its chicken on the menu at Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.

Cultivated meat isn't vegan, of course. But for the billions of people who aren't ready to give up chicken, meat grown in a steel tank instead of a shed full of birds could mean far fewer animals raised and slaughtered. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates livestock produce around 14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and every alternative that takes a bite out of that is welcome. For everyone else, beans still work brilliantly.

The US now follows Singapore, which became the first country to approve lab-grown chicken for sale in 2020. Earlier this year the Dutch government made the largest public investment ever in cultivated meat, Germans ate less meat than at any time since records began and KFC took Beyond Fried Chicken nationwide. Years ago Tyson Foods' CEO said the future of food might be meatless. It's arriving faster than anyone thought.

The food revolution is official. The FDA said so.