Lab-grown meat could go on sale in Britain within a few years, the food regulator has said, with applications for cultured steak, beef, chicken and foie gras already recorded, while further applications are expected in the next two years.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recently received £1.6m of government funding to develop an effective process of . The FSA said the UK is an attractive market because it has a large number of vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians, a greater openness to new foods than many other European countries and a large financial sector to support start-ups.
Israel has, since this year, laboratory steak
by growing cells and does not require raising or slaughtering animals. Cultured chicken was approved for sale to consumers in Singapore in 2020 and in the US in 2023, and cultured steak was approved in Israel in 2024. Dozens of companies around the world are developing similar products, including using pork and fish.
Livestock farming is a major cause of climate warming emissions and nature destruction. Cultured meat requires much less land and water to produce and avoids the problems of . While cultured meat has the same cells as slaughtered meat, ensuring it is safe for human consumption is still vital, said Professor Robin May, senior scientific adviser at the FSA.
Cells, cultured in a liquid medium
“Companies are clearly aiming to achieve products that are indistinguishable from the animal equivalent, but how they achieve this is fundamentally different,” he says.
The cells are grown in a liquid and are incentive to turn into muscle, blood and adipose tissue, .
Professor May also said the FSA was sometimes criticized for delays in making decisions on new foods: “(But) the most important thing is that the food you buy is food you can trust. So I think people expect us to go as far as possible in terms of establishing food security.”
Cultured meat companies claim that it is safer in many ways than traditional meat because it avoids contamination from farm bacteria like E coli and salmonella, as well as the antibiotics given to many animals.
