U.S. approves its first lab-grown meat — chicken made by two California companies

For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and, eventually, supermarket shelves.

The U.S. Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, which had been racing to be the first in the nation to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.

The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental effects of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.

“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.

The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company, Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.

Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside’s case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays.

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But don’t look for this novel meat in grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt: Meat Lab at UC Berkeley.

The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.

Company executives are quick to note that the products are meat, not vegetarian substitutes like the Impossible Burger or offerings from Beyond Meat, which are made from plant proteins and other ingredients.

Globally, more than 150 companies are focusing on meat from cells, not only chicken but also pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment.

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Upside, based in Berkeley, operates a 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Emeryville. On a recent Tuesday, visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was sauteing a cultivated chicken filet in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions.

The finished chicken breast product was slightly paler than the grocery store version. Otherwise, it looked, cooked, smelled and tasted like any other pan-fried poultry.

“The most common response we get is, ‘Oh, it tastes like chicken,’” said Amy Chen, Upside’s chief operating officer.

Good Meat, based in Alameda, operates a 100,000-square-foot plant, where chef Zach Tyndall dished up a smoked chicken salad on a sunny June afternoon. He followed it with a chicken “thigh” served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace and tiny purple cauliflower florets. The Good Meat chicken product will come pre-cooked, requiring only heating to use in a variety of dishes.

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Chen acknowledged that many consumers are skeptical, even squeamish, about the thought of eating chicken grown from cells.

In a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, half of U.S. adults said that they are unlikely to try meat grown using cells from animals. When asked to choose from a list of reasons for their reluctance, most who said they’d be unlikely to try it said that “it just sounds weird.” About half said they didn’t think it would be safe.

Cultivated meat begins with cells. Upside experts take cells from live animals, choosing those most likely to taste good and to reproduce quickly and consistently, forming high-quality meat, Chen said. Good Meat products are created from a master cell bank formed from a commercially available chicken cell line.

Once the cell lines are selected, they’re combined with a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other elements that cells need to grow. Inside the tanks, called cultivators, the cells grow, proliferating quickly. At Upside, muscle and connective tissue cells grow together, forming large sheets. After about three weeks, the sheets of poultry cells are removed from the tanks and formed into cutlets, sausages or other foods. Good Meat cells grow into large masses, which are shaped into a range of meat products.

Both firms emphasized that initial production will be limited. The Emeryville facility can produce up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products a year, though the goal is to expand to 400,000 pounds per year, Upside executives said. Good Meat executives wouldn’t estimate a production goal.

By comparison, the U.S. produces about 50 billion pounds of chicken per year.

It could take a few years before consumers see the products in more restaurants, and seven to 10 years before they hit the wider market, said Sebastian Bohn, who specializes in cell-based foods at CRB, a Missouri firm that designs and builds facilities for pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies.