Lab-grown meat, dairy, and sugar may be available for human consumption in the UK for the first time in as little as two years, which is earlier than anticipated.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is examining how it can speed up the approval process for lab-grown foods.
Such products are cultivated from cells in small chemical plants.
UK firms have led the field scientifically but feel they have been held back by the existing regulations.
Dog food made from meat that was grown in factory vats went on sale in the UK for the first time last month.
In 2020, Singapore became the first country to permit the sale of cell-cultivated meat for human consumption, followed by the United States three years later and Israel last year.
However, Italy, the US states of Alabama, and Florida have instituted prohibitions.
The FSA will collaborate with academic researchers and specialists from high-tech food companies to create new regulations.
It states that it plans to finish the comprehensive safety evaluation of two foods produced in a lab within the two years it has begun.
However, critics say that having the firms involved in drawing up the new rules represents a conflict of interest.
The effort was launched in response to UK companies’ worries that they are falling behind their foreign competitors, whose approvals processes take half as long.
Prof Robin May, the FSA’s chief scientist, told BBC News that there would be no compromise on consumer safety.
“We are working very closely with the companies involved and academic groups to work together to design a regulatory structure that is good for them, but at all costs ensures the safety of these products remains as high as it possibly can,” he said.
However, this strategy has its detractors, including Pat Thomas, director of the campaign organisation Beyond GM.
“The companies involved in helping the FSA to draw up these regulations are the ones most likely to benefit from deregulation and if this were any other type of food product, we would be outraged by it,” she said.
The science minister, Lord Vallance, took issue with the process being described as “deregulation”.
“It is not deregulation, it is pro-innovation regulation,” he told BBC News.
“It is an important distinction because we are trying to get the regulation aligned with the needs of innovation and reduce some of the bureaucracy and duplication.”
Foods produced in laboratories are developed from microscopic cells into plant or animal tissue. To modify the food’s qualities, gene editing may occasionally be required. They are said to provide possible health benefits and to be better for the environment.
The government wants lab-grown food companies to succeed because it believes they can boost the economy and provide new jobs.
The UK is good at the science, but the current approvals process is much slower than in other countries. Singapore, the US and Israel in particular have faster procedures.
Oxford’s Ivy Farm Technologies is prepared to produce lab-grown steaks using cells from Aberdeen Angus and Wagyu cows.
The firm applied for approval to market its steaks to restaurants at the start of last year. Ivy Farm’s CEO, Dr Harsh Amin, explained that two years was a very long time to wait.
“If we can shorten that to less than a year while maintaining the very highest of Britain’s food safety standards, that would help start-up companies like ours to thrive.”
A similar narrative is told by Dr. Alicia Graham. Working at the Bezos Centre in west London at Imperial College, she has managed to cultivate a sugar substitute. A berry gene is introduced into yeast in this process. By using this method, she may create a lot of the crystals that give it its sweet flavour.
It doesn’t make you fat, she says, and so is a potential sweetener and healthy substitute in fizzy drinks.
In this instance, I am permitted to sample it. It reminded me of lemon sherbet; it was really sweet, fruity, and slightly sour. But it needs permission before Dr Graham’s company, MadeSweetly, can sell it.
“The path to getting approval is not straightforward,” she tells me.
“They are all new technologies, which are not easy for the regulator to keep up with. But that means that we don’t have one specific route to product approval, and that is what we would like.”
The FSA says it will complete a full safety assessment of two lab-grown foods within the next two years and have the beginnings of a faster and better system for applications for approvals of new lab-grown foods.
Prof May of the FSA says the purpose of working with experts from the companies involved as well as academics is to get the science right.
“It can be quite complex, and it is critical that we understand the science to make sure the foods are safe before authorising them.”
But Ms Thomas says that these high-tech foods may not be as environmentally friendly as they are made out to be as it takes energy to make them and that in some cases their health benefits are being oversold.
“Lab-grown foods are ultimately ultra-processed foods and we are in an era where we are trying to get people to eat fewer ultra-processed foods because they have health implications,” he said.
“And it is worth saying that these ultra-processed foods have not been in the human diet before.”
I’m not sure I would eat lab-grown food, but I suppose as long it’s correctly labelled as lab-grown, most people will eat it, and in the end, we will have no way of avoiding it.
However, people will eventually take lab-grown meat over US-farmed meat any day.
I mean, who would eat meat that has been pumped full of hormones to stimulate growth, force-feeding them processed calorific foods and keep the animals inactive so they grow faster, then chemically washing the meat in chlorine to remove the bacteria that contaminate the meat due to the cramped conditions it is raised in – this is all pretty standard in the US.
Good job I don’t live in the US then!
The image above doesn’t exactly make lab-grown meat look very tasty, but then neither does most processed meats, but that doesn’t stop people from consuming the meat in large amounts, regardless of the environment, animal welfare or their own health. Perhaps the meat will be used in burgers, pies and fast foods, instead of being displayed in the window of your local butcher’s shop.
Eating lab-grown food is not natural, it is genetic engineering, and something feels truly wrong when they are creating food from a lab instead of the land. I believe it takes us down an extremely disturbing cul de sac, especially when saying it will create jobs – it won’t, it will cost jobs in the agricultural sector – we all know they want to stop agriculture.
I’ll have to go to vegetarianism if the only food available is lab-grown. I have no problem with this, but I should be able to choose rather than have it imposed on me.
The whole point of ‘lab produced’ is that it doesn’t rely on jobs – it automates supply. Every promotion from the global wealthy and the global corporations is to warm us up to the belief that they will supply us without having to work for it.
However, I suppose with lab-grown meat – it would lower carbon emissions, animal abuse and habitat destruction, but then making food synthetically in a laboratory – what could possibly go wrong?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 