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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

lab meat

Tofurky and the ACLU go to the Meat-resses in Legal Dispute with Missouri

There are serious issues that sound silly when you say them out loud. For instance, this sentence: Tofurky and the American Civil Liberties Union are among a coalition challenging a new Missouri law that regulates what food products can be called “meat.”

No disrespect to the company, but it’s hard not to giggle when you hear about Tofurky lawyering up.

But the silliness of Tofukey’s portmanteau quickly subsides when you realize what’s at stake — or in this case, steak.

The debate over what can and can’t be called meat has been going on for a good part of this year. Traditional meat organizations have seen the investment and advancements in lab-grown meat (or cultured meat) and as so many threatened incumbents do, they have turned to government regulation. While the FDA held a public meeting about the naming issue, Missouri went ahead and became the first state to pass a law outlining what could be called meat.

Back in May, the Missouri Senate passed legislation that included Senate Bill No. 977, which prohibits “misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” That law goes into effect today, and violators could be fined up to $1,000 and be imprisoned for a year.

The Missouri Cattlemen’s Association (MCA), which supported the bill, has the following statement on its website: “Major companies are investing in developing laboratory grown meat and calling it ‘beef.’ MCA will push for a protection of its nomenclature by protecting the word beef to only include food derived from actual livestock production. This is all about marketing with integrity. MCA will not stand for laboratory grown food or plant based meat alternatives to be marketed as something it’s not.”

Part of the argument from the MCA and similar agricultural organizations around the country is that alterna-meats will cause confusion among consumers. Sure, shoppers may not accidentally grab a Tofurky at Thanksgiving, but as lab meat makes its way to market, there are legitimate labeling issues at play. What should the labeling requirement be for meat grown in a lab? Beyond Meat likes to sell its burger patties in the meat aisle — does having “meat” in its name cause confusion?

While its moniker may not befuddle people, Tofurky has nonetheless joined up with the ACLU, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Good Food Institute to take on this legislation. Among the complaints this coalition has is that the law plays favorites to benefit the meat industry, violates free speech, and violates a law preventing discrimination against out-of-state companies. Additionally, they argue that the law itself is so vague that it’s hard to follow.

Again, on the surface, it seems silly to make such a big ado about meat. But millions of dollars are being invested in lab-grown meat startups that are poised to drastically change what and how we eat meat — er, cultured animal tissue. And as the FDA has pointed out, it’s not just meat that has skin in the game. The government is looking at what can be called “milk,” and that itself will extend into what can be called “cheese” or “yogurt,” etc.

But passing a law to protect the past isn’t going to stop progress.

Smart companies have seen the writing on the wall and decided it’s better to join ’em rather than try to beat ’em with a legislative stick. Chicken giant, Tyson, is leading the way with numerous investments in both lab-grown and plant-based meat companies, and Cargill has gotten in on the cultured meat game with an investment in Memphis Meats.

Already there are glimmers of hope that we can work through this potential morass. Memphis Meats, a leader in the lab-grown meat space, teamed up with the North American Meat Institute to send a letter to President Trump urging him to “clarify the regulatory framework for cell-based meat and poultry products,” and suggesting that the FDA and USDA collaborate on oversight of the emerging cultured meat industry. Sure, it’s only a letter, but it’s two sides from across the aisle on this debate working together. If we can get other groups to do the same, the results won’t be silly at all.

FDA to Hold Public Meeting on Cultured Meat

There has been a lot of activity and investment in the lab-grown meat, or “cultured” meat space in the past year. Enough so that it has attracted the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which announced today that it will be holding a public meeting about cultured meat technology next month.

For the uninitiated, cultured meat is animal tissue grown in a lab setting. It’s typically made through the use of starter cells from the animal, which are then developed in some kind of medium (often fetal bovine serum) in a bioreactor, then scaffolded to provide shape or texture.

Ethical and environmental issues with raising animals for slaughter and consumption have driven much of the competition and advancement in the cultured meat space, with Memphis Meats, SuperMeat, Future Meat, Aleph Farms and JUST among the leaders of this new type of food.

While it was once ridiculously expensive to grow meat in a lab, the large number of players and technological developments in the space are bringing that price down, and it seems that the FDA wants to be fully prepared before cultured meat makes it to the grocery aisle.

A meeting entitled “Foods Produced Using Animal Cell Culture Technology” will be held on July 12 in College Park, Maryland. From the FDA’s site:

The public meeting will give interested parties and the public an opportunity to comment on these emerging food technologies. Specifically, the agency is asking for input, relevant data and information on the following questions:

  • What considerations specific to animal cell culture technology would be appropriate to include in evaluation of food produced by this method of manufacture?
  • What kinds of variations in manufacturing methods would be relevant to safety for foods produced by animal cell culture technology?
  • What kinds of substances would be used in the manufacture of foods produced using animal cell culture technology and what considerations would be appropriate in evaluating the safety of these uses?
  • Are the potential hazards associated with production of foods using animal cell culture technology different from those associated with traditional food production/processing?
  • Is there a need for unique control measures to address potential hazards associated with production of foods using animal cell culture technology?

In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., and FDA Deputy Commissioner Anna Abram said that they want to “help foster dialogue regarding these emerging food technologies.” It went on to assert the USDA’s jurisdiction over cultured meat because, well, cultured meat is food, after all.

In reaction to the FDA’s announcement today, The Good Food Institute, which helps promote the work being done on clean meat, released a statement of its own saying “We are heartened to see that FDA is engaged in thinking through how clean meat can come to market under the existing regulatory framework. We are also encouraged that the FDA commissioner has acknowledged the benefits of clean meat, including animal welfare and environmental impacts. The United States has a robust food regulatory regime that is more than capable of ensuring that clean meat is safe and truthfully labeled.”

Speaking of labels, the FDA said this meeting will also include what we should actually label lab-grown meat. Cultured meat has raised the hackles of traditional meat producers who do not want the waters of what we consume muddied. Earlier this year, the United States Cattlemen’s Association filed a petition with the USDA asking for beef labeling requirements. The Cattlemen were specifically asking that “…any product labeled as “beef” come from cattle that have been born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner, rather than coming from alternative sources such as a synthetic product from plant, insects, or other non-animal components and any product grown in labs from animal cells.”

If our recent “Future of Meat” meetup in Seattle is any indication, the public meeting next month promises to be a rousing event, and more importantly, the start of a broader discussion around alternative meats. If you’re going, be sure to drop us a line and tell us how it went.

Shojinmeat is Growing a DIY Clean Meat Community

In our video conference chat, Yuki Hanyu is almost matter of fact as he explains to me the steps involved when growing your own lab meat (or clean meat, whatever you want to call it) at home. It involves a fertilized chicken egg, dry ice, a centrifuge and an incubator. His English is a little broken, but his instructions are so clear I pause to wonder, “Well, why aren’t I growing lab meat in my kitchen?”

While the idea of cultivating lab-grown meat in your garage may sound like the beginnings of some 1980s B-movie, there are actually groups of people working on just such endeavors — and Hanyu is connecting them online with the Shojinmeat Project.

Hanyu, who has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, started Shojinmeat in 2014 as part of his mission to democratize cell agriculture, including cell culture technology. Based out of Tokyo, Shojinmeat is now an active Slack channel that connects roughly 30 DIY citizen scientists from across Japan. They gather to talk about their homegrown meat experiments and related topics such as tissue engineering, animal welfare, and regenerative medicine. Shojinmeat has also put out ‘zines with articles and pictures about their work, and recently made a move to the West by creating an English-speaking Slack channel.

When you think of lab-grown meat, you probably think of–you know–a lab, with pristine white countertops, glass walls, and beakers gurgling. And if you know your way around lab meat, you may also know that the most common form of cell media is fetal bovine serum (FBS), which comes from slaughtered cow fetuses. You may wonder how everyday people would get their hands on such a thing, which is difficult to produce and therefore very expensive.

According to their presentation deck, Shojinmeat has done away with FBS altogether, using yeast extract as a cheaper, plant-based media, oftentimes supplemented with egg whites for necessary growth factors.

The homegrown meat process starts with a fertilized egg which, at least in Japan, is available at the local supermarket. Without getting too graphic, you incubate that egg for a dozen days, crack it open and extract your cells from the fetus inside.

Now those cells need to multiply. Historically, according to Hanyu, the biggest barrier to homegrown meat has been contamination. In order to multiply, meat cells need to be incubated at 38.5 degrees Celsius with 100 percent humidity — which happens to also be the perfect temperature for mold. Hanyu says that the egg whites make more common culture media mold-resistant.

Finally, to give the meat structure, Hanyu adds konjac, an East Asian plant, which the meat cells glom on to, adding depth. After incubating for a week to ten days, you will have a visible amount of meat growing!

Hanyu likens DIY lab meat enthusiasts to homebrewers, saying “They grow yeast cells, we grow meat.” While people in the Shojinmeat group have been successful growing meat, Hanyu didn’t mention anything about its taste during our chat.

But Hanyu is no mere enthusiast. In 2015 he spun out Integriculture, an ambitious startup that he hopes will create a “general purpose large-scale cell culture system.” He’s assembled a team of scientists and Hanyu says the company has already patented its core concept. But with Integriculture, Hanyu is thinking beyond meat (no pun intended), and even beyond our own planet.

In the short term, Integriculture won’t even make meat. Instead, it will use its cell growing technology to create customized products for cosmetics and supplements companies. Hanyu is vague on details, but says he’s been talking with potential customers who are interested in Integriculture’s general purpose cell growth capabilities across a wide array of applications.

Further out, the company plans to create a clean meat infrastructure that it could license out to other companies. Which means you probably won’t see Integriculture meat on the store shelves; instead, Integriculture’s process will be used to create meat that will be branded and sold by other companies.

Eventually, and this was where Hanyu’s straightforward demeanor gave way to something altogether more animated, Integriculture wants to create a clean meat facility that could be used on Mars. “We’re sci-fi freaks!” he said, beaming.

When asked what makes his company different from other players in the lab-meat space, such as Memphis Meat and SuperMeat, Hanyu says that Integriculture’s technology is more general purpose. In addition to meat, Integriculture has proven that it can grow foie gras (liver), and Hanyu says they can also grow other types of cells, such as pancreatic cells (though in our talk he did not mention any pharmaceutical applications).

Hanyu said that Integriculture is currently closing a ¥300,000,000 ($2.7 million USD) round of funding. While the company has space age dreams, cultured meat has the potential to make a big impact right here on Earth by providing a more eco-friendly and safer source of animal protein to the planet’s growing population.

Until lab meat becomes more mainstream, however, Shojinmeat will be growing its own culture of DIY enthusiasts who create their own meat at home. Will you be among them?