The Food and Drug Administration has approved the production of laboratory-grown meat for the first time. In a notice published on Wednesday, the organization declared the safety of a “cultivated chicken” product produced by Upside Foods.
The FDA announced that it had “examined the evidence supplied to the agency and at this time has no further issues about the firm’s safety determination.”
Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of the Berkeley, California-based startup, stated in a statement that “this is a landmark event in the history of food.” “Delicious meat that is generated directly from animal cells will soon be available to consumers in the United States.”
According to his company, the cells from a single chicken can be used to cultivate the same quantity of poultry that is currently produced using hundreds of thousands of farmed chickens.
Although the organization determined that Upside Foods’ chicken was safe to consume, the food cannot be sold. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Food Safety and Inspection Service are the last barriers Upside must clear before releasing its product on the market.
The FDA stated that it was working closely with USDA-FSIS to ensure that the product was properly regulated and labeled as it got closer to hitting the American market.
A bowl of noodles with Upside Chicken Positive Foods
According to a recent interview with NPR, Valeti, a cardiologist, founded Upside in 2015 after developing the concept for what is now referred as as “cultivated” meat while working at the Mayo Clinic and growing human heart cells in a lab. He reasoned that scientists could use a needle biopsy to remove cells from an animal and then give them nutrients to help them grow and create meat.
According to the business, Upside’s manufacturing facility in Emeryville, California, will be able to create more than 50,000 pounds of products annually once it has regulatory license to market them, including a chicken fillet.
According to scientists, the production of food, particularly cattle, is responsible for around one-third of all greenhouse gases created by humans. The argument for lab-grown meat is that it would reduce methane emissions and aid in the fight against global warming.