For the first time, US regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer meat “lab grown” to restaurants and eventually to supermarkets in the nation.
The Department of Agriculture gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms determined to be the first in the United States to sell meat that does not come from slaughtered animals but from what is now called meat “cultivated” that goes from the laboratory to the table.
The measure ushers in a new era that aims to eliminate animal death and drastically reduce the environmental impacts of grazing, growing animal feed and animal waste.
“Instead of dedicating so much land and so much water to feed the animals that will be slaughtered, we can do something different,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, the operator of Good Meat.
The firms received the approval from federal inspectors required to sell meat and poultry in the United States. Previously, the Food and Drug Administration deemed the two’s products safe for consumption. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meats, also received approval.
This meat is grown in steel tanks with cells from a live animal, a fertilized egg, or a special bank of cells. In the case of Upside, it comes out in large sheets that are then shaped into chicken cutlets or sausages.
Good eat, which already sells cultured meat in Singapore, the first country to authorize it, turns clumps of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satés.
But no one expects this novelty meat to appear in chicken joints across the United States in the foreseeable future. Farmed chicken is much more expensive than traditional farm-raised chicken and cannot be produced on the same scale as traditional meat, said Ricardo San MartÃn, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at the University of California Berkeley.
The companies plan to serve the new food in selected restaurants: Upside has partnered with the Bar Green restaurant in San Francisco, while the Good Meat dishes will be served at the Washington restaurant run by its chef and owner José Andrés.
Company executives were quick to point out that their products are meat, not substitutes like the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat dishes, made with plant proteins and other ingredients.
In the world, more than 150 companies are concentrating on growing meat from cells, not only chicken but also pork, lamb, fish and beef, which have the greatest impact on the environment.
Berkeley-based Upside operates out of a 70,000-square-foot building in neighboring Emeryville. Recently, a group of visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was preparing fillet of farm-raised chicken sautéed in a white wine sauce with tomatoes, capers and scallions.
The breast was slightly paler in color than the chicken breast. But it looked, smelled, and tasted like traditional pan-fried chicken.