Virtual Food Policy Conference Series: Meat Without Animals: Exploring Public Policy Around Food Made with Cultured Animal Cells
August 31, 2021
Cell-cultured meat, cell-based meat, cultivated meat, cellular agriculture, lab-grown meat, clean meat—call it what you will, meat without animals appears poised to hit supermarket shelves in the not so distant future. Regulators in Singapore approved the world’s first cell-cultured chicken for human consumption in December of 2020, and hundreds of millions of investment dollars continue to pour into companies dedicated to producing animal products without the animal. But federal food safety authorities have yet to establish a regulatory process for evaluating these novel products, and the path is fraught with uncertainty surrounding how cell-cultured meat products should be labeled and evaluated for safety, and what companies need to disclose about their production processes. This panel explored public policy around cell-cultured meat and its significance.
Moderator
Tom Philpott, Mother Jones
Panelists
Jessica Almy, The Good Food Institute
Isha Datar, New Harvest
Tom Neltner, Environmental Defense Fund
Jim Thomas, ETC Group