Cultivated-Meat Set to Hit UK Supermarket Shelves in 2 Years

3 mins

Thousands of tons of meat can be produced from one cow cell

Laboratory-produced meat could be on sale in the UK within a few years, according to the country’s industry regulator.

Applications for cell-grown steak, beef and chicken have already submitted to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), while another 15 applications are expected in the next two years.

And a proposed version of fois-gras could be a kinder alternative to the controversial dish, which is usually made from the bloated liver of a force-fed duck or goose.

Lab-grown meat — or cultivated or cell-based meat — is meat that is developed from animal cells and grown, with the help of nutrients like amino acids, in bioreactor vats.

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Scientific advances mean it is now possible to grow thousands of tons of steak from cells derived from a single cow.

The FSA was awarded £1.6m (AED7.7 m) of government funding to develop an efficient safety assessment process for the foods.

It said the UK was an attractive market as it had a high number of vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians, an openness to new foods and a large financial sector to back start-up companies.

Slaughter-free Meat

Cultivated produce is produced by growing cells and does not require the raising or slaughter of animals. Cultivated chicken was approved for sale to consumers in Singapore in 2020 and in the US in 2023.

While cultivated meat had the same cells as the slaughtered version, ensuring it was safe for human consumption was still vital, said Professor Robin May, the chief scientific adviser at the FSA.

‘Companies are obviously aiming for products indistinguishable from the animal equivalent, but the way they are achieving that is fundamentally different,’ he said.

laboratory technicians working on cell-based meat

The cells are grown in a liquid and then develop into muscle, blood and fat tissue.

May said: ‘There is lots of potential here for all sorts of benefits in terms of welfare, sustainability, health, and just consumer choice.

‘Many of the techniques used to create cell-cultivated products have been used to create cell-cultivated medicines previously. So for us, it’s a huge advantage to be able to draw on that massive amount of evidence.’

Cultivated meat companies say it is safer than traditional meat, as it avoids contamination with farm bacteria such as E coli and salmonella, and the antibiotics given to many farm animals.

Linus Pardoe at the Good Food Institute Europe, which supports the development of cultivated meat, said: ‘The new government clearly wants to capitalise on the strong investments made in British cultivated meat over recent years by bringing products to market in a way that upholds the UK’s gold standard safety regulations.’

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