Bbc
This Steak Wagyu cultivated in the laboratory is ready to eat, but cannot be sold in the United Kingdom because it has not yet been approved
Meat, dairy products and sugar cultivated in a laboratory could be on sale in the United Kingdom for human consumption for the first time within two years, earlier than expected.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) examines how it can speed up the process of approval of cultivated food in the laboratory.
These products are cultivated from cells in small chemical plants.
British companies have paved the way scientifically in the field, but believe that they were retained by current regulations.
Dog foods made from meat cultivated in factory vats were sold in the United Kingdom for the first time last month.
In 2020, Singapore became the first country to authorize the sale of cultural meat for human consumption, followed by the United States three years later and of Israel last year.
However, Italy and the American states of Alabama and Florida have aroused prohibitions.
The FSA must develop new regulations by working with experts from high -tech food companies and university researchers.
He indicates that he aims to complete the complete evaluation of the safety of two cultivated laboratory foods in the two -year process he begins.
But criticisms say that having companies involved in the development of new rules represents a conflict of interest.
The initiative is in response to the concerns of British companies that they lose ground due to competition abroad, where approval processes take half of the time.
Professor Robin May, FSA chief scientist, told BBC News that there would be no compromise on consumer security.
“We work in close collaboration with the companies involved and university groups to work together to design a regulatory structure which is good for it, but at all costs guarantees that the security of these products remains as high as possible,” he said.
But criticisms such as Pat Thomas, director of the Beyond GM campaign group, are not convinced by this approach.
“Companies involved in FSA assistance to develop these regulations are the most likely to benefit from deregulation and if it were another type of food product, we would be scandalized by it,” she said.
BBC News
The cells are cultivated in fermentation tanks and then transformed to look like food
The Minister of Sciences, Lord Vallance, challenged the process described as “deregulation”.
“It is not deregulation, it is the pro-innovation regulations,” he told BBC News.
“This is an important distinction, because we try to align the regulation on the needs of innovation and reduce part of the bureaucracy and duplication.”
Laboratory cultivated foods are grown in plant tissues or animals from tiny cells. This can sometimes involve genes genes to modify the properties of food. The advantages claimed are that they are better for the environment and potentially healthier.
The government wants food companies cultivated in the laboratory to thrive because it hopes to be able to create new jobs and economic growth.
The United Kingdom is good in science, but the current approval process is much slower than in other countries. Singapore, the United States and Israel in particular have faster procedures.
Ivy Farm Technologies in Oxford is ready to go with laboratory -grown steaks, made from cells taken from Wagyu and Aberdeen Angus cows.
The company asked for approval to sell its steaks to restaurants at the start of last year. The CEO of Ivy Farm, Dr. Harsh Amin, explained that two years was very long to wait.
“If we can shorten this within a year, while maintaining the highest of British food security standards, this would help start-ups like ours to prosper.”
These crystals cultivated in the laboratory resemble sugar and are much more sweet
Dr. Alicia Graham has a similar story. Working at the Bezos Center of the Imperial College in western London, she found a way to cultivate an alternative to sugar. It is a question of introducing a gene found in a yeast bay. This process allows it to produce large amounts of crystals that give it a sweet taste.
This does not make you fat, she says, just like a potential sweetener and a healthy substitute in carbonated drinks.
In this case, I am allowed to taste it. It was incredibly sweet and slightly sour and fruity, reminding me of the lemon sherbet. But Dr. Graham’s company, Madesweetly, is not allowed to sell it until it is approved.
“The path to obtain approval is not easy,” she told me.
“These are all new technologies, which are not easy to follow for the regulator. But that means that we do not have a specific path to the approval of the products, and that is what we would like.”
The FSA says it will complete a complete evaluation of the safety of two cultivated laboratory foods over the next two years and will have the beginnings of a faster and better system for applications for new laboratory cultivated foods.
Professor May of the FSA says that the aim of working with experts from involved companies as well as academics is to ensure that science is right.
“It can be quite complex, and it is essential that we understand science to ensure that food is safe before authorizing them.”
But Ms. Thomas says that these high -tech foods may not be as environmentally friendly as they are made to be energy to make them and that in some cases their health services are occurring.
“Foods cultivated in the laboratory are ultimately ultra-transformed foods and we are at a time when we try to bring people to eat fewer ultra-tail foods because they have health implications,” he said.
“And it is worth saying that these ultra-adjustment foods have not been in the human regime before.”
