UK clears lab-grown meat for pet food amid heated EU debate on food innovation

The UK has become the first European country to authorise the sale of lab-grown meat, albeit for pet food rather than human consumption, following approval by the country’s regulators earlier this month. 

While Singapore and the US approved the sale of lab-grown meat for human consumption in 2020 and 2023, respectively, the debate over this controversial technology is becoming even more heated at the EU level.

Lab-grown meat (also known as cultivated or cell-based meat) is produced using genuine animal cells that grow in a nutrient-rich environment, forming the muscle, fat, and connective tissues that constitute meat.  

Proponents, such as the Good Food Institute (GFI), argue that cell-based meat could reduce soil and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and land use. Additionally, it offers the benefit of producing meat with a reduced risk of contamination from bacteria, meaning no need to use antibiotics and a decreased risk of drug resistance in humans. 

However, critics fear that expanding these technologies could destroy the agricultural sector, erode local culinary customs, and alter landscapes, with no guarantees in terms of greater sustainability, as very little is known about the energy consumption of the process at scale. 

A discussion among EU farming ministers on Monday (15 July) highlighted deep divisions regarding embracing innovation in food production and its potential impact on the bloc’s agricultural and culinary traditions.  

Speaking to journalists after the ministerial meeting, Hungarian farming minister István Nagy stressed that food production goes beyond “satisfying a biological need.” 

“If we also consider all the things closely related to food, such as traditions, cultures, ecological sustainability, arable land, and maintaining the landscape (…), you realise that is a far more complex issue, requiring complex responses,” said the far-right politician.  

This month, Hungary notified the European Commission of its plans to introduce national legislation to restrict the production and sale of cultivated meat, mirroring a national ban in Italy that was approved but never enforced. 

Last January, Austria, France and Italy also called for a debate on lab-produced meat before any authorisation is granted. They viewed it as a threat to “genuine food production methods,” and were even more explicit than Budapest in questioning whether lab-meat should be considered as a food or as pharmaceutical products when it comes to authorisation.

Scepticism about cell-based products has been echoed in other EU nations, including Czechia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, and Slovakia. 

However, a recent YouGov survey commissioned by GFI involving 16,000 consumers across 15 European countries found that 69% of respondents in Portugal, 58% in Spain, 65% in Germany, and 57% in Belgium would support the sale of cultivated meat if regulators deemed it safe and nutritious.  

In France and Italy, where government opposition has been strong, support was 49% and 53%, respectively. 

While discussions on cell-based food continue to stir passions and controversy, approval for cultivated meat in the EU is far from imminent. The same applies to large-scale production. 

“In sectors like lab-grown meat, there have been challenges. We have got to get to next-generation approaches there,” Bill Gates, one of the most known investors in the sector, told Bloomberg in an interview last June. 

Last February, the specialised website AgFunderNews estimated a 78% decline in investments for cultivated meat in 2023 compared to 2022.  

The staunch political opposition to certain innovative food products is based on genuine concerns. However, it overlooks the many possible outcomes for developing this technology, including the potential for failure.  

Jean-François Hocquett, a prominent researcher at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), envisions a future where farmed and lab-grown meat coexist in Europe, among other possible scenarios. However, he stresses that complete replacement of livestock is still science fiction due to technical, regulatory, and societal constraints. 

The Agrifood Brief will take a summer break after this edition and will return at the end of August.

Nibbles of the week

Key takeaways from the new cohort of agriculture. The official lineup for the new European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) has been confirmed on Friday (19 July). Parliament sources told Euractiv that the ECR’s choice for the chair is the Czech MEP Veronika Vrecionová, who served as the group’s coordinator in AGRI during the 2019-2024 term. 

After providing details on some of AGRI’s key members, Euractiv brings you the main takeaways from the committee’s final composition for the 2024-2029 mandate.

New parliament’s fisheries committee braces for challenging agenda. The Fisheries Committee (PECH) is one of the few to lose seats in the new legislature, dropping from 28 to 27 members. The list of members was published on Friday morning (19 July).

Commission suspends benefits for Ukraine on the imports of groats. Groats were among the sensitive products (the others are eggs, sugar, oats, maise, poultry and honey) shielded by the EU when it renovated the trade benefits to help the Kyiv economy. The zero-tariff quota for Ukrainian groats exhausted on 8 July and the Commission announced on Friday the reintroduction of tariff quotas from the EU-Ukraine 2016 free trade agreement, as already done for oats, eggs and sugar.  

Von der Leyen promises fair income for farmers in his second term as Commission president. Ursula von der Leyen pledged to guarantee a fair income for European farmers in her address to the European Parliament on Thursday (18 July), dealing with one of the main demands of the protests that swept the EU in early 2024. 

Meanwhile, economists warn no easy fix for low prices at the farm gate. As the EU launches a new EU Agri-Food Chain Observatory, agricultural economists argue that there is no single solution to the problem of farmer remuneration, as the issue is tied to market structure. 

The new observatory held its inaugural meeting on Wednesday (17 July). 

Von der Leyen also announced a water strategy amid growing conflict over agricultural use of large reservoirs. The re-elected president of the European Commission promised a “strategy for sustainable management of water” when 21 EU ministers called for water to be a top priority on the European agenda. 

On Friday and Saturday, demonstrations are planned in the south-west of France against large water reservoirs – the so-called “mega-basins”.  

Brake on Green Deal and simpler rules: Agricultural ministers’ wish list for next term. At the Agriculture and Fisheries Council (AGRIFISH) meeting in Brussels on Monday (15 July), a group of member states led by Austria called for agriculture to be exempted from net-zero climate plans and for simpler rules for national administrations. 

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro/Alice Taylor]

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