Lab-Grown Meat Approved in the United States for the First Time!

Lab-grown meat could soon be coming to the United States!

The FDA gave the pre-market consultation greenlight to a company called UPSIDE Foods.

UPSIDE Foods uses animal cell culture technology to take living cells from chickens and grow the cells in a controlled environment to make cultured animal cell food.

“The decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) means that a company called Upside Foods will soon be able to sell chicken made from real animal cells grown in bioreactors instead of requiring the slaughter of live animals,” WIRED reports.

Breaking: The FDA has approved lab-grown meat for the first time in the US. https://t.co/fYfwIWt2JL

— WIRED (@WIRED) November 16, 2022

For the first time ever a lab grown meat has been approved by the FDA.

Upside Foods will soon be able to sell chicken made from animal cells grown in a lab. https://t.co/XyIFmrPeGh

— GOOD (@good) November 16, 2022

The FDA announced:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed its first pre-market consultation for a human food made from cultured animal cells. We evaluated the information UPSIDE Foods submitted to the agency and have no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion. The firm will use animal cell culture technology to take living cells from chickens and grow the cells in a controlled environment to make the cultured animal cell food.

The FDA’s pre-market consultation with the firm included an evaluation of the firm’s production process and the cultured cell material made by the production process, including the establishment of cell lines and cell banks, manufacturing controls, and all components and inputs. The voluntary pre-market consultation is not an approval process. Instead, it means that after our careful evaluation of the data and information shared by the firm, we have no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion.

WIRED shared further details about the approval process before UPSIDE Foods is made available to the public.

There are just two smaller regulatory steps remaining until cultivated meat can be made available to the public. Upside’s production facilities still require a grant of inspection from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and then the food itself will need a mark of inspection before it can enter the US market. These two steps are likely to be completed much more quickly than the long FDA pre-market consultation process that resulted in the approval.

“It’s the moment we’ve been working towards for the last, almost seven years now,” says Uma Valeti, Upside’s CEO. “Opening up the US market is what every company in the world is trying to do.”

Different startups are focusing on a range of cultivated meats, including beef, chicken, salmon, and tuna. This announcement only applies to Upside Foods and its cultured chicken, although it’s likely that other approvals will follow soon. The products have been approved through an FDA process called Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). Through this process, food manufacturers provide the FDA with details of their production process and the product it creates, and once the FDA is satisfied that the process is safe, it then issues a “no further questions” letter.

The FDA decision means that cultivated meat products may soon be available to the public to try, although it’s likely that tastings will be limited to a very small number of exclusive restaurants. Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn has already announced that she will serve Upside Foods’ cultivated chicken at her restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.

Valeti says that he wants the public to have their first taste of Upside chicken through selected restaurants before they can buy and cook it at home. “We would want to bring this to people through chefs in the initial stage,” says Valeti. “Getting chefs excited about this is a really big deal for us. We want to work with the best partners who know how to cook well, and also give us feedback on what we could do better.”

UPSIDE Foods already posted the news of the FDA greenlight on its website:

STRONG AND COURAGEOUS: Your Children Need This…TAP HERE

Today we are one step closer to your dining tables as UPSIDE Foods becomes the first company in the world to receive the USFDA greenlight – that means the FDA has evaluated our production process and accepts our conclusion that our cultivated chicken is safe to eat.

As PRNewswire noted, Bill Gates is among the listed investors of UPSIDE Foods:

UPSIDE Foods (formerly Memphis Meats), the leading company in the cultivated meat, poultry, and seafood industry, has announced the close of a $400 million Series C funding round, the largest round in the industry to date. This new raise will help unlock the industry’s biggest opportunities around scale and places the company’s valuation at over $1 billion. Pending regulatory review, UPSIDE Foods plans to be available to consumers in the U.S. later this year.

cont.

“UPSIDE has reached an historic inflection point, moving from R&D to commercialization,” said Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods. “Our team at UPSIDE continues to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges in our mission to make our favorite food a force for good. Working in partnership with our world-class coalition of investors, we’re excited to bring delicious, sustainable and humane meat to the consumers around the world.”

The Series C round is co-led by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore, and the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund (ADG), a new investor. Other new investors include Baillie Gifford, Givaudan, John Doerr, SALT fund, and Synthesis Capital. They are joined by existing investors Bill Gates, Cargill,  Cercano Management, CPT Capital, Dentsu Ventures, Singapore-based global investor EDBI, Kimbal and Christiana Musk, Norwest Venture Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, SOSV’s Indie Bio, and Tyson Foods.