The lab-grown meat industry just got the regulations it's been begging for

Source: Vox

The lab-grown meat industry just got the regulations it’s been begging for

Taking cell-based meat products to market will require a regulatory framework. The FDA and USDA just announced one.

By Kelsey Piper Mar 9, 2019, 8:00am EST

It’s not every day you see companies rejoicing at an announcement that the government is figuring out how to regulate their product.

But that’s exactly what happened Thursday, March 7, when the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that they’d established a framework for regulating cell-based meat and poultry. The companies working on those products were thrilled.

Why? Well, cell-based meat companies have been arguing for years that their product is meat and should be regulated like meat from slaughterhouses. And they’ve pointed out that, for America’s “clean meat” industry to remain competitive with the clean meat industries in Israel, China, Singapore, the Netherlands, Japan, and other countries, companies need assurance that their product will be responsibly regulated by the USDA and the FDA.

Proponents believe cell-based meat has the potential to solve a bunch of the world’s biggest problems in one shot. They hope it can end animal cruelty on factory farms, combat climate change, reduce the use of antibiotics to keep animals alive in cramped conditions, and make it possible to feed a growing, increasingly wealthy global population.

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Read more: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/9/18255806/fda-usda-lab-grown-meat-cell-based-vegan-vegetarian