USDA Gives OK for Sale of ‘Lab Grown Meat’ to Public
The move opens up vast new opportunities for food-based virtue signaling.
The last time we checked on the practicality of meat products grown from laboratory processes, a new study had just revealed that it was up to 25 times worse for the environment than real beef.
Despite the potential environmental impacts and lack of current technology to safely upscale production to meet current consumer needs, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved its sale to the public, clearing the way for two California companies to sell chicken produced from animal cells.
It will likely be years before shoppers can buy lab-produced meat in grocery stores. But the government’s decision will eventually allow the sale of lab-produced meat across state lines after passing federal inspections.
The decision is a milestone for companies making cell-grown meat, along with consumers looking for alternatives to chickens bred in a factory farm and slaughtered.
Supporters of alternative proteins along with the companies that sought federal approval — Upside Foods and Good Meat — celebrated the news as pivotal for the meat industry and the broader food system at a moment of growing concern about the environmental impact of meat production and its treatment of animals.
“This approval will fundamentally change how meat makes it to our table,” Dr. Uma Valeti, the chief executive and founder of Upside Foods, said in a statement. “It’s a giant step forward towards a more sustainable future — one that preserves choice and life.”
Be on the lookout for the social media campaigns that will soon be promoting this new line of products.
Upside’s chief executive, Uma Valeti, said this marks a paradigm shift in meat production and is a milestone the company has worked toward since 2015. The company plans for its products to be first available at a restaurant: Bar Crenn in San Francisco.
“We’re also running a social media contest for a chance to be among the first in the U.S. to try our cultivated chicken,” Valeti said.
Good Meat will also debut in restaurants, with acclaimed chef José Andrés ready to serve it at one of his dining rooms in D.C.
“Launching our cultivated chicken in a restaurant setting is the perfect way to introduce consumers to real meat that’s made in a whole new way. Being able to do that with José Andrés, one of the most respected chefs in the world, is a dream come true,” said Andrew Noyes, the company’s head of global communications.
The approach may prove challenging. People have concerns.
I dunno, dude. FDA just greenlit lab grown meat. pic.twitter.com/L11HKljY1K
— Turi (@Turiladun) June 22, 2023
Lab grown meat! YUCK!!! US approves chicken made from cultivated cells, the nation’s first ‘lab-grown’ meat https://t.co/6VJAtdIJis
— daisy (@Paused4Cause) June 22, 2023
However, the move opens up vast new opportunities for food-based virtue signaling.
Lab grown meat is objectively the moral alternative to what we do now and can probably be made healthier too.
I'm all for it.
— Kiku15 (@Shakky151) June 22, 2023
If the California firms are hoping that premiering the laboratory meat in a high-end San Francisco restaurant is going to inspire the rest of American to join the craze, they are in for a world of disappointment. This is especially true as at least 10 restaurants in the area closed in May, and with the way its looking in the Bay Area, there may not be many remaining soon.
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Do we trust the FDA?
Or any three-letter agency, for that matter….
Or the elites who are trying to corner the whole food market, they are looking for both obscene profits and control.
Lab-grown “meat” sounds like cancer
All lab meat is grown as immortalized tumor cells.
Putting aside the nasty factor, you don’t get cancer from eating cancer because the tumor cells are not infectious/viral. Now, if they were prion contaminated cells, that’s a different story. Also, no cell lines without mutations can be immortalized. They simply die out in a dish. A few “harvested primary cells” can reproduce a couple generations but most are only going to last as long as they have left and that’s it.
I would consider trying it because I like to do “food dares” (like menudo or tripe for instance). I don’t think it would be my go-to choice.
Good luck with that.
I’ll pass.
What is wrong with juts raising chickens? For many years that is what I did, that and meat rabbits. We over wintered rabbits. and a few hens, flock was 50-60. Most males were raised to size, butchered and canned. I had 2 incubators. When I finish moving we will start raising them again. Eggs will store at least 6 months. that is why the flock was so big.
Because, Tyson for example, has giant factories where birds are kept in cages and fed via conveyor belt and such. It’s disturbing to people who don’t know where their grocery store products come from to see industrial-level meat production.
I think they will be even more put off by the idea of lab-level meat production.
Grown in the Wuhan lab. Probably something that requires being swallowed by its host in order to gain its function.
I have oft repeated, the market niche for this technology is selling meats from animals that are not available on the market through normal agriculture.
Grow Dodo meat, or Mammoth, or other unobtainable species that humans used to eat.
Doesn’t work that way. You’d have to have immortalized cell lines from those organisms. We dont even have normal viable cells. They could try to clone in the genome, and I guess that might be able to work for the lab grown meat stage. I just don’t think it’s going to produce the result that mimics real meat for the adventurous palate consumer looking for the thrill of eating an extinct organism.
It might not work. But it would really be the route to gaining acceptance of this stuff if it did. Then it becomes “Hey, those people that do the tasty ‘Real Mastodon Burgers’ are gonna do regular cow meat, too!”
Instead, they’re stuck with the preachy quotient, which I’ve never found to increase the taste of anything.
Explain the difference between immortalized cells and tumors?
It’s a lot harder to get an immortalized cell line than it is to get a normal tumor. So, specialized tumor?
If not done with some evil intent, this should be perfectly safe. Still…I am gonna be pretty far from the front of the line on this one.
Consider who is pushing this, and what basis is there for assuming no evil intent.
Subotai Bahadur
“…. that humans used to eat.” We could call it Soylent Green for a certain variety that was now grown in a lab.
Hard pass on laboratory meat. Heck I don’t even eat processed foods.
I bet this “chicken” would taste better than SPAM.
Don’t say that out loud on Guam.
Yeah, because then everybody will come running toward you and the island will capsize.
I quit eating meat almost 50 years ago. I have never seen a news article or development in all that time that made me regret that choice.
This is no different. Nope, not sorry
Ew. This isn’t getting any better. I’ve noticed the quality of meat at different restaurants I used to enjoy has gone waaaaaaay down.
I think a major effort to show Americans that the process for “growing” this meat is not grotesque or factory-like is going to be required.
Or, of course, a moral initiative forced on grocery stores and restaurants.
I’m pretty certain which one we’ll see, given our current environment.
Best to cultivate a relationship with a local farmer now, as long as they’re allowed to exist.
Lab grown meat vs The Impossible Burger. Let the inedible food wars begin!
I’d want proof that it doesn’t have negative affects on the ingester’s body, long or short. We’ve already seen what the FDA allows with “vaccinations”.
The crap in the impossible burger is a chemist delight
Really disgusting, tried to tell my vegan son to no avail
I hope they use free-range chicken cells.
Funny, when I was a teen, we had a female neighbor who was really slow, It was rural, with 5 party GTE phone line. There was a battleax who would take her phone off hook, preventing else from using it, when the woman who was dull was complaining about it was told by another neighbor to call and demand to speak to Alexander Gram Bell, which she did. She had 3 kids and did not want more, became pregnant, said that they didn’t do it that much.
I solved the off-hook problem by pumping a 200 Hz 100 watt signal into the line, that caused the network interface in the phone to heat up, smoke and stink to high heaven.
Wow, I had the same thing happen to me and responded the same. What a co-inky-dink! Wot kinda sauce you spread on your chicken?
It tastes like despair.
I am guessing that those who avoid anything “GMO” like the plague, and willingly pay extra for something with “organic” on the label will be happy to consume some chicken-like substance made in a lab/factory. That’s what these people are counting on??
This is going to be the ultimate processed food…..
There are soy-based meat substitute’s now, been around for a very long time.
This is sorta the ultimate GMO.
Meanwhile, here at my place we just got another package of the most amazing Wagyu beef shipped to us from a ranch down in the valley. They are raising the most amazing tasting cows I’ve ever had, and trust me, I worked for 15 years traveling all around the US with an expense account entertaining clients. I’ve eaten at a LOT of the ‘best’ steakhouses in the US. It’s expensive, but holy cow is it good. https://2fakaushibeef.com
If you hate meat so much why does it always have to taste like meat? Y our not winning and converts, what you are getting are people to cowardly to say just give me a chicken sandwich.
First noting that I am a major carnivore if meat is available and affordable.
With that in mind, two thoughts popped up.
1) the old line from the movie . . .”Soylent Green is people!”
2) given the long history of deliberate lies about food and health matters by the Federal government, and the current ruling class’ desire to put anyone to the Right of Trotsky in camps . . . will it be made by “GULAG Enterprises”?
Subotai Bahadur
Third, as one blogger claims, what they’re actually growing is cancer tumors. Just doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested in eating.
Like MLK, I have a dream where all those crooked Dems are judged on their lack of merit, in jail for at least 2 years before their trial. Feed them a soy based green mush, automatically dispensed based on their RFID and BMI. 🙂
will it be made
byfrom “GULAG Enterprises”?FIFY
If you have ever read space sci-fi, all meat is vat grown.
But that’s fiction.
“Good Meat,” eh? Hope he has the same marketing success as Good Pillow.