By Lawrence Topley

The UK has become the first European country to approve lab grown meat. The cell cultivated product is expected to hit supermarket shelves within the next year in the form of pet food (BBC News, 2024). This news comes after London based startup Meatly had its application to use cell cultivated chicken to form the protein source of its pet food approved by the Foods Standards Agency (FSA) (Meatly, 2024). 

The process used by the company involves taking cells from a chicken egg, and cultivating it with a range of amino acids, proteins and vitamins that act as a catalyst for growth in a bioreactor (Meatly, 2024). With time, the cells grow into a paste like protein which is used in Meatly’s canned pet food. 

Whilst there is no current application for the use of lab grown meat for human consumption, this move by the UK regulator signals a strong intent to support the provision of meat alternatives and the technologies behind them. Despite falling investment in the sector over the last year, this call from the FSA makes the UK the European front runner in the cellular agriculture market (Good Food Institute, 2024), which seeks to appeal to new trends in consumer habits whilst addressing the environmental and ethical concerns over the rearing of livestock. 

Applications to sell novel foods made by companies such as Meatly, face a rigorous test to ensure safety standards are met. The law surrounding this process stems from retained EU legislation, which, post-Brexit, is governed by the FSA, who are empowered under the Foods Standards Act 1999 to preside over food safety standards in the UK (FSA, 2024). 

The legal basis of the application process begins with the EU Directive 2015/2283 (Eur-Lex, 2015), which defines novel foods ‘as foods or food ingredients that were not commonly consumed in the EU or UK before May 15, 1997.’ This Directive sets out the goal for member states, to achieve in producing a defined list of novel foods. This was then carried out by EU Regulation 2017/2470 (Eur-Lex, 2017), which established a list of novel foods to be sold with the EU and UK, where we can see cellularly cultivated goods form part of this definition. 

Novel foods such as these are therefore subject to the application process set out in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/456 (Eur-Lex, 2018). This involves a consultation process, where applicants must demonstrate that their product is both safe for consumption and would not be nutritionally disadvantageous to the product it is replacing, in this case meat. This point may prove crucial in ensuring consumers trust the food they are feeding to their pets. Following which, applicants must then pass a series of technical steps, which requires that they submit as much information as possible surrounding their goods and their processes. Once passed, these goods can then be released onto the market. 

This decision by the FSA has a number of wider implications. Most significantly, it signals belief in the benefits of cell cultivated products and their place in wider society at state level. If we are able to harness this technology correctly, we could see an improvement in animal welfare. Minimising the number of livestock slaughtered for food, with around 20% of meat produced globally being consumed by pets (Guardian, 2021) as well as a reduction on the environmental impact of agriculture, which acts as the UK’s fifth highest greenhouse gas contributor (UK Research and Innovation, 2022). 

The decision has since been backed up again in early October with a government grant of £1.6 million, awarded to the FSA by the Government’s Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund (FSA, 2024) with the purpose of improving the safety and standards of granting cell cultivated goods placed on the market specifically in the UK. One would expect part of this sum to be put towards making the application process more efficient and possibly less stringent (standards are currently higher in Europe than in other jurisdictions)in order to allow the streamlining of regulations to open up and push on the creation of cellularly cultivated goods in the UK market post Brexit, without compromising the safety of novel foods. Whether the UK would adopt its own regulation, in an effort to make the process more attractive to firms, is yet to be seen. However, this seems the most obvious route to attract competition, lower prices and improve the marketability of the cultivated goods ,especially if public opinion is already on the fence on consuming lab made meats (FSA, 2024). 

Indeed, seeing if the UK’s pets are able to safely enjoy the newly cultivated foods may well be the start of a journey that sees this novel food land on our plates in the not so distant future.