The Food Standards Agency, in partnership with Food Standards Scotland, has published the UK’s first safety guidance for lab-grown meat, also known as cell-cultivated products.
In the latest update from the agencies’ CCP Sandbox Programme, several pieces of safety guidance have been produced.
The sandbox focuses only on animal cells and has defined cell-cultivated products as new foods that don’t involve traditional farming such as rearing livestock or growing plants and grains. They are made by taking cells from plants or animals, which are then grown into food.
The first piece of guidance has confirmed cell-cultivated products produced using animal cells are defined as products of animal origin, which means businesses must apply existing food safety regulations during the production process.
The second has provided guidance on allergenicity assessments and how nutritional quality will be assessed as part of the approval process for all cell-cultivated products.
“Our new guidance provides clarity for businesses, helping them to understand and correctly demonstrate to UK food regulators how their products are safe,” said Dr Thomas Vincent, director of innovation at the FSA. “Specifically, this guidance ensures companies have assessed potential allergenic risks and that they are nutritionally appropriate before they can be authorised for sale.”
Vincent added that consumers could be “reassured that these innovative new foods will meet the same rigorous safety standards”.
The Sandbox programme is funded by the Department of Science & Technology through the Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund.
This programme, Vincent said, was “allowing us to fast-track our regulatory knowledge to reduce barriers for emerging food technologies without compromising on safety standards”.
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