Agriculture Department approves lab-grown meat for sale in US

Lab-grown meat (MGN)

UNITED STATES (WDEF) — The U.S. Agriculture Department approved the sale of lab-grown meat on Wednesday.

Some companies in California will now be selling “cultivated meat,” which is chicken or cow meat grown from animal cells in a lab.

Scientists used cells from living animals, stored cells or fertilized eggs to then grow the meat in steel tanks. Good Meats compared this tank to a “beer fermenting tank.” Companies do not grow whole animals; they only grow the meat they want to use for production.

However, Good Meats stated that this process does not include antibiotics, growth hormones or GMOs. It takes the meat four to six weeks of growth before being processed.

On their website, Good Meats stated that they “take the harvested cells and create the end product, using processes like molding and 3-D printing. The product is subject to rigorous safety and regulatory review.

Upside Foods calls this process “more efficient” and “humane.”

WebMD claimed that in 2019, 55 companies were working on creating cultivated meat. As of April, they added that “the science isn’t clear about what impact lab-grown meat could have on nutrition.”