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Biotech

FDA Clears Lab-Grown Chicken As Safe To Eat (cbsnews.com) 136

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-really-real dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: The Food and Drug Administration on Monday cleared cultured "cultured chicken cell material" made by GOOD Meat as safe for use as human food. While the FDA said the lab-grown chicken was safe to eat, GOOD Meat still needs approval from the Agriculture Department before i can sell the product in the U.S. If approved, acclaimed chef Jose Andres plans to serve GOOD Meat's chicken to customers at his Washington, D.C. restaurant. He's on GOOD Meat's board of directors.

The FDA previously gave the green light to lab-grown chicken made by Upside Foods in November. Upside Foods and GOOD Meat both use cells from chickens to create the cultured chicken products. Once cells are extracted, GOOD Meat picks the cells most likely to produce healthy, sustainable and tasty meat, the company explained. The cells are immersed in nutrients inside a tank. They grow and divide, creating the cultured chicken, which can be harvested after four to six weeks. GOOD Meat's chicken is already sold in Singapore. "Today's news is more than just another regulatory decision -- it's food system transformation in action," says Bruce Friedrich, president and founder of the Good Food Institute, a non-profit think tank that focuses on alternatives to traditional meat production.

"Consumers and future generations deserve the foods they love made more sustainably and in ways that benefit the public good -- ways that preserve our land and water, ways that protect our climate and global health," Friedrich says.
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FDA Clears Lab-Grown Chicken As Safe To Eat More

FDA Clears Lab-Grown Chicken As Safe To Eat

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  • First post! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrMadnutz ( 446737 ) on Thursday March 23, 2023 @11:37PM (#63395141)

    Seriously though - I can't wait to see the ethics arguments on Twitter. I'm quite looking forward to not eating chicken from the current farming strategies currently in use in the US.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      Seriously though - I can't wait to see the ethics arguments on Twitter.

      Since Musk took over, I'd imagine it's mostly going to be like a virtual Chick-Fil-A with a bunch of cattle holding up signs saying "Eat Mor Reel Chikin".

      • "cultured chicken cell material"
        is coming

    • Re:First post! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by indytx ( 825419 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @07:38AM (#63395719)

      Seriously though - I can't wait to see the ethics arguments on Twitter. I'm quite looking forward to not eating chicken from the current farming strategies currently in use in the US.

      I live near a lot of chicken farms and processing facilities, and the entire industry is soul-sapping and abusive. We can't have lab-grown chicken soon enough.

      • I grew up near an industrial turkey farm (like lunchmeat turkey). Every week or so at 3am they'd fill a dumpster full of dead birds to get hauled off to make dog food or something.

        My dad worked a summer as a young man at one and to this day won't eat birds of any kind. "They call it 'fowl' for a reason" he always said.

        I think agriculture in general gets vilified somewhat unjustly, but those bird farms are every bit as bad as the activists claim in my experience. If you're worried about how animals are cared

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      I'll take the real thing, thank you. I don't have any desire to eat processed foods anymore. I'll give them props for creating a meat substitute similar to the real thing that can be created and transported in space, though. We don't currently have the technology to carry a cow or a chicken to space, slaughter it, breed it, etc., so it's a good substitute in that situation.
      • And you think the current real chickens and cows are much healthier to eat? Think again. I don't care really, of it tastes the same but there is no slaughtering needed of live animals, the better it is. In reality it is the same meat by the way it is cultured, except you don't have to kill a lot of animals for it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbialac ( 320955 )
          I'm not a vegan or vegetarian nor am I a particularly strong animal rights activist. I do want to see animals treated humanely until slaughter and slaughtered humanely, but I don't have issues beyond that. As far as the general idea of killing to eat, it's been an issue forever and come down to those exact principals. It's part of the core of kosher eating, which covers how to slaughter animals. For ethical reasons I also shy away from quinoa as western adaptation of it has malnourished the people who used

    • Alternate paths to food security is a great thing, but the thing that I will not accept is marketing things like this as something they aren't. This is not chicken. It did not come from a chicken. They should not be allowed to use chicken in the name at all unless it is the flesh of a living chicken. If it is marketed TRANSPARENTLY, I would willingly try it. If it is marketed as chicken, it will never cross my lips, and I'll bad mouth their product till the end of time to anyone else who will listen.

      • But it literally is flesh of a living chicken, just kept alive outside the chicken longer than usual and coaxed to grow. Genetically, biologically, nutritionally, it's chicken. If you were to look at any given cell, it may be impossible to tell whether it came from a freshly butchered chicken or one whose flesh was kept alive artificially. The cell division by which vat-meat grows is the same biological process that also goes on inside a traditional chicken. So one might consider the vat to be in fact a chi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Traditionalist, eh? I still wish some of the subsequent discussion had used more relevant Subjects when it wandered into deeper thoughts. Plus you should have gotten your Funny mod.

      However it's a good enough Subject for this meta-complaint, right?

  • If it's greener and just as healthy/unhealthy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Thursday March 23, 2023 @11:43PM (#63395155)

    Then I'm all for it. I have no urge to have animals die for me. It's just that they're so delicious.

    • Re:If it's greener and just as healthy/unhealthy.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @05:01AM (#63395529)

      Well, that vat-chicken also better be cheaper than the real deal because I doubt that a lot of people have the money to have pity with animals these days.

      • Spot on. Folks may have forgotten how to vote with their wallets, but they still eat with them.

        Ironically, a vast number of animals that are slaughtered for food would never have been born in the first place. Is it better to live for a minute only to be eaten, or to never have been born at all?

        Keep in mind how much natural life ends as sustenance for another creature.

        • Re:If it's greener and just as healthy/unhealthy.. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @10:18AM (#63396093) Homepage Journal

          Vat-grown meat has the potential to produce higher volumes at lower cost, but also lower pollution, lower risk of disease, higher quality consistency. Compassion is not what is driving this at all.

          Current factory farming techniques produce quite a lot of harmful pollution, and their routine use of antibiotics is creating antibiotic-resistant strains of disease that threaten us all. We seriously need vat-grown meat to replace factory farming, for all of these reasons.

          People motivated by compassion are already not eating meat. This just might give them an option to start again, if they care to.

          • The thing with vat grown meat, is that it's likely uniform (think of anything made with "pink slime"). Meat isn't uniform, and in some cases it's highly desired that it *not* be uniform (think of a T-Bone, or a ribeye, or some other marbled meat)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        We're already at the point where Oat Milk is cheaper than "real" milk. Fake meat being cheaper than real meat gets closer every year. It is inevitble that at some point it will be cheaper, raising cattle is incredibly time consuming and resource intensive.

        FWIW I also don't see cattle ever going away, it is just going to turn in to a luxury food.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      The problem is chicken is an efficient protein. It has a feed conversion rate of about 1.8:1, and all together a combined water and feed rate of around 5:1. Pork is 5.1 for feed and about 20:1 all together. Beef is... horrible - it starts at 20:1 for feed and rises to 120:1 all together.

      So if you can lab-grow meat, you really ought to stick with beef as it's so inefficient to produce a pound a beef that it is much easier to optimize that than optimize something that's really efficient.

      (Of course, eating pro

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        I think it's chicken first because chicken is likely easier. I know for vegan products there were decent substitutes for chicken well before beef and even today the only good beef ones are burger paddies which are a far cry from a steak. Quorn brand has been making chicken substitutes that range from nuggets to stuffed "chicken breasts" for a couple of decades now and they're not so bad, especially since they're not made from soy so they dont have that nasty soy, meat substitute rubberiness.

  • Stir-frying.
    Pan-frying.
    Grilling/BBQ.
    Baking/roasting.
    "cultured chicken cell material"

    • Boil 'em
      Mash 'em
      Stick 'em in a stew

      • Sounds interesting.

        We've been eating selectively-cultured food for millennia if you include yeast for fermentation or cultivating specific mushroom varieties. Also, besides being consumed in food and beverages like bread, yogurt, cheese, beer, and wine for millennia and, more recently, as dietary probiotics, microorganisms are increasingly used to produce food additives and are considered a sustainable food source for the future.

        Picking specific meat samples and encouraging them to grow in a vat sounds lik

  • FDA vs USDA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Thursday March 23, 2023 @11:49PM (#63395173)

    Putting it simply, FDA clearing is "is this thing chemically similar to food?" Which I don't doubt lab grown cells to be. USDA clearing is "can you sell this without it becoming contaminated and how will you recall if it does?" I'm going to be honest, I have no idea how USDA determines well being of cells grown which is the main component of lab grown meat. I'm sure they've got a process (I hope) but I've found nothing on their site indicating the process. Bad cells grown in a lab are more prone to bacteria and other food borne illness and it's a big deal in the USDA process. Any meat sold needs the overwhelming majority to be good cells. Like I would put the cutoff somewhere near 95% but maybe the USDA has a higher (or maybe lower bar).

    That said, whatever the process the USDA signs off on, it'll be interesting (maybe just to me) where that bar is and how they go about inspection for that bar. Regular meat there's all kinds of checks on the well being of the animals in stock before slaughter, so it's kind of easy to see "oh hey that chicken has lesions growing on it and we see 2% of the chickens displaying such, this meat cannot be sold". So I'm just wildly curious as to how this will work for lab meat. I mean I sure people have all kinds of opinions and what not about lab meat in general, but for me, I'm just curious on how the USDA signs off on this stuff. Whatever the die roll on this, it's breathtakingly interesting.

    • When things go wrong there is no immune system as backup, on the other hand as long as the process is secure nothing is getting in. By having a hermetic enclosure and pressure cooked nutrients the cell culture is in some ways also less prone to food borne illness than an animal.

      I have zero faith they can actually produce anything at reasonable cost or desirability. Forming a large muscle is hard, some cell goop is not very appealing, even glued together with some transglutaminase.

      • Re:FDA vs USDA (Score:5, Informative)

        by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @12:16AM (#63395215) Homepage

        I have zero faith they can actually produce anything at reasonable cost or desirability. Forming a large muscle is hard, some cell goop is not very appealing, even glued together with some transglutaminase.

        Have you seen chicken nuggets?

        • Have you seen chicken nuggets?

          Which isn't exactly high praise. Chicken nugget filling is basically chicken flavored protein paste. It's why Impossible makes soy-based nuggets that pretty much taste the same as the real thing, because nuggets aren't all that great to begin with. They're fodder for young children and stoner food.

          The thing about chicken is that you can certainly produce a substitute for the lower-quality sorts of chicken products. Whatever that stuff is that floats around in Campbell's soup already seems like something

          • Which isn't exactly high praise. Chicken nugget filling is basically chicken flavored protein paste.

            Reminds me of that video where Jamie shows kids how nuggets are made and they all go, "ew!" but as soon as he fries it up in little packets, they're all, "yum!"

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        • The picture on their website looks pretty good - like it has some real chicken texture.

          https://www.goodmeat.co/ [goodmeat.co]

          Chicken nuggets are made from gound/pulverized chicken mixed with spices, which is why they have that odd texture. Still pretty tasty though.

      • What short memories people have. Go back to December when stores had no eggs in stock or they cost $15 a dozen. There was a massive cull because bird flu was sweeping through factory farms. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/27... [npr.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        > I have zero faith they can actually produce anything at reasonable cost or desirability.

        That will take time, certainly. There are a number of technical hurdles, and they won't clear them all at once. And then there is the adoption curve, which has a substantial impact on cost due to economies of scale, and in the case of a product like this (which has an existing very direct competitor product that is very well-established), that's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

        You're not going to walk into your
    • Airborne pathogens love to contaminate cultures. Ask any pathology lab. Just look at milk, yogurt and soft serves. Or contaminated greens, say because one lazy worker did not wash his/her hands. Even on the space station, germs and nasties lurk. Animals have an immune system to kill pathogens, but a stainless steel vat does not. Just imagine if a mad-cow prion jumped in.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Visit an industrial chicken farm and processing facility and tell us again how some magical chicken immune systems will make the product free of germs.

        • In the VAT. Bacterial Contamination, Mold & Virus Contamination, Mycoplasma Contamination, Yeast Contamination. DNA fingerprinting, karyotype analysis, and isotype analysis can confirm the presence or absence of cross-contamination in your cell cultures. Beer and wine VAT's should taste the same, but rarely do. The VAT's used to grow Covid Vaccines, that were carefully inspected, and one facility which failed. I don' t think the early stuff will be tested well. As for processing faciliti
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • A basic chemical analysis would be a great startingpoint. Pretty sure lot's of home grown / made foods would not pass one of those.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kbahey ( 102895 )

      Bad cells grown in a lab are more prone to bacteria and other food borne illness

      To expand on this point:

      A living animal such as a chicken or a cow has almost no bacteria in its muscles.
      The reason is that the immune system keeps everything 'clean', with a few exceptions, such as the digestive tract.

      That is whole beef cuts are safe on the inside.
      Chicken has certain bacteria (Salmonella) in its tissues, and can cross contaminate though.

      With lab grown meat, the only way to grow them is to have a sterile culture

      • People would riot if companies did this, but sterilize the final product with high radiation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kbahey ( 102895 )

          It is not enough to sterilize the final product to kill any bacteria on it.
          Some bacteria and yeasts excrete horrible toxins that persist even if the bacteria are not alive anymore.

          Examples are botulinum toxin.
          Other bacteria also produce potent toxin, such as diphtheria, and tetanus.

        • High speed radiation that is extremely lethal to virus, bacteria and fungi, but is very short-lived, would probably be best. Gamma radiation from Cobalt or Cesium has been used in Europe for many decades now to sterilize food (such as milk) and has had no detrimental effect on the nutrition of said food, despite what the uneducated naysayers may say. Intense UV radiation would have the same effect, just that it is readily absorbed and doesn't penetrate. It is commonly used in water purification since it is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      In theory, once you have a lineage of cells, all future cells of that lineage for all time are going to be identical. There never should be "good cells" or "bad cells" because they are going to all be genetically the same.

      Essentially with this process, all chicken should be perfect all the time. It actually should reduce the need for USDA inspection at all... what actually needs to happen is any new production facility should have to prove the lineage of their cells, once that lineage is proven, the only th

  • When enough money enters the conversation, anything is going to be deemed safe until it isnt, then the lawyers get involved with class action lawsuits so the people are not only but poor. Its well known the FDA has no power over the industry whose execs trade places at the top and the lobbyists ensure congress doesnt ask a lot of questions.

  • Tanks full of nutricients is just waiting for a disaster to happen.
    "The Last of us" was meant as an entertaining tv series, not some documentary.
    https://www.nbcsandiego.com/ne... [nbcsandiego.com]

  • What we need is a multicellular organism which grows into an oscillating muscle with intramuscular fat cells, while it floats in hydrolized protein.

    Cancerous cells from existing animals will not produce anything worth eating for anyone.

  • So if lab grown meat is ethically ok to eat (Score:3)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 ) on Friday March 24, 2023 @12:27AM (#63395231)
    Doesn't that mean that lab grown human meat is also ethically ok to eat?
  • These new technologies involving biology, heath and environment are still in Young Frankenstein stage. I imagine scientists working late in the organ lab that bring along their experimental lunch meat incubator and create some creepy McNuggets or human organs with seven herbs and spices. What if after grandpa's transplant, he starts clucking like a chicken, or tastes and smells like chicken noodle soup? With genetics and CRISPR and Virology all going on in hospitals, renown for cafeteria food, we might
  • Which SF book was that?

  • The FDA passes a lot of things that other countries feel is unsafe. I'm sure any chicken regardless of where it is grown is safe to eat in the USA by the time they are done injecting it with all manner of drugs and then chlorine washing the result.

    • Don't forget the salmonella in every bite.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 )

      The FDA passes a lot of things that other countries feel is unsafe.

      This. The bar for "safe for human consumption" is famously much lower in the US than it is in other first world nations. When/if this product passes EU certification as "safe to eat" I'll give it a try.

  • It doesn't matter if the food product is lab grown, plant based or whatever. If it tastes good AND costs less, people will buy it. Trying to pitch any of these products as a boutique item just won't sell.

    Hamburger doesn't look like a cow. You buy it because you like eating burgers. Offer lab meat that looks like, tastes like the real thing AND costs less, and that will be the end of the cattle industry.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 )
      I agree, but how many years or decades away is such technology realistically? I'm not an expert in this field by any stretch but I find it unlikely to happen in the next two decades, more like three to five decades.
      • If you have ever seen the process used to convert soybeans into vegetable textured protein (or even tofu) and still come in cheaper than traditional meat, then this process may very well become the cheaper and more ethically sound option. If that is the case, then we should see this on the market as something like cultured protein (or some such) that could very well be sold as an ethically vegetarian/vegan alternative. If it is cheaper than traditional animal protein, all the better, because the meat indust
      • Two decades is a loooong time in the world of technological development. Think about what things were like just two decades ago.

        - no cell phones

        - TVs were still mostly CRT

        - hybrid vehicles were brand new

        - Spinning Drive sizes were measured in GB, not TB

        - SSD sizes were measured in MB, not TB

        If you want lab grown meat to take over from traditional meat products, you have to make it at least as good and cheaper. It's the same with electric vehicles. When they become lower cost than ICE vehicles (and

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ormy ( 1430821 )

          Hmm, most people probably had at least one LCD replacing a CRT by 2003 even if it was the computer screen rather than the main TV. Hybrid vehicle technology had been around for many decades already in the form of diesel electric locomotives, and would have been technologically possible in cars much earlier, it was more a social and societal change (especially regarding awareness and acceptance of anthropogenic global warming) that allowed hybrid cars to become economically viable (i.e. profitable enough to

          • Governments are not in the business of food production. Food companies are. And if one guy can figure out how to make a new product that is lower cost than the other guy and make a profit at it, then he's going to make A LOT of money. There's your incentive.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Ormy ( 1430821 )
              True but that "figuring out" is a significant effort, and takes significant cost that may or may not give any return at all. It's very possible (even likely) someone could sink significant funds into 'figuring it out' and get nowhere. No guaranteed ROI, not that much incentive.
  • Now i will never eat chicken again and will probably turn vegetarian

  • Please report to the food vats immediately!

  • I will be looking for two things before I get my hopes up. The first, is if lab grown meat turns out to actually be easier on the environment once it gets to production levels. Particularly if it has less of a green house effect. The U.N. has a report stating that raising livestock contributes more the green house effect than transportation. The second thing I will be looking at is if lab grown meats are cheaper than conventional meats. I think the public will have an "ick" factor, but if it lab grown

  • I am not a picky eater. On one end of the scale, I enjoy processed foods like bologna, pizza rolls, and twinkies. On the other end I also enjoy unprocessed foods like wild mushrooms, fresh self-harvested/butchered venison, food bugs, and grass-fed beef too. I am definitely going to try the vat-grown chicken-like substance.

    If you're less of an omnivore, i.e. if you have "standards", avoid processed foods, or think the "No antibiotics" label on packs of chicken is important, you probably want to have anothe

  • Stop using that word. It DOES not mean what you THINK it means. Also, best and greatest . . . time to retire those babies.

    I have a co-worker has has completely destroyed the word 'delicious' by using it with verbal upper case for everything he's ever described that was food. It's like swearing, it only stings when it's a little old lady that doesn't do it more than twice a decade.

  • Human beings have been eating the things we do for millions of years. Companies can come up with food-like substances in months; that doesn't mean that it won't hurt us, and the hurt may not happen immediately. I think things with protein, GMOs, and additives should be tested for 5-10 years before consumption. That way diseases such as cancer an prion related diseases could be mitigated.

  • Let's see, do I prefer legacy chicken at $3/lb or high tech chicken at $30/lb. Hmm... my friends are going to be really impressed....

  • ... for that organic farmer who figured out how to raise pigs, chickens, cows and crops in rotation on his land. I guess he can sell it to the people growing your food in a chemical processing plant.

  • This opens all sorts of weird culinary opportunities of dubious levels of ethics and morality, including meburger.
  • So this will be vegan/begetarian approved then? No live animal was used/suffered for the creation of it.

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