IS IT SAFE?: Why Europe lags behind in lab-grown meat race
The EU livestock industry has sought to protect descriptors for 'meat'. Farm lobby groups argue that lab-grown meats could mislead consumers about what they're really eating.
ARTHUR NESLEN: When Singapore became the first country to approve and commercially sell lab-grown meat last month, Ira van Eelen couldn’t help thinking the wrong continent was making the headlines. “What’s happening in Singapore should have been happening in Europe,” said Van Eelen, a board adviser to Eat Just, the company that produced the lab-grown chicken in Singapore.
Her father, Dutch scientist Willem van Eelen, pioneered and patented the technology which Eat Just had hoped to launch in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch Food Safety Authority (NVWA) shut down their request to hold tastings in 2018, saying it hadn’t received EU approval.
Eat Just’s experience reflects what industry insiders describe as a continent too reluctant and too slow to embrace a technology that could slash agricultural emissions and shore up food security — two of the EU’s declared priorities… But while Asia, the United States and even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are jumping on the slaughter-free meat bandwagon, European policymakers have shown less appetite for the technology.
“Is this really the society we want for our children?” tweeted France’s Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie in reaction to Eat Just’s Singapore debut. “Me, NO. I say it clearly,” Denormandie continued. “Meat comes from life, not from laboratories. Count on me that in France, meat will stay natural and never artificial!”
Companies like Eat Just, which is based in San Francisco, say such skepticism means Europe risks losing out on a sector that analysts predict could make up over a third of the global meat market by 2040… “We have so much very good technology in Europe that we could be up there with anybody, but if they don’t gear up in a different way then we will lose out and lose out big time,” Van Eelen warned…
Part of the issue is Europe’s regulatory process. Lab-grown meat will need to be approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) under the EU’s novel foods legislation. The bloc streamlined those laws in 2018, but it can still take three years or more until applications are approved and green-lighted by EU country representatives in the so-called PAFF committee…
Potential pushback from Europe’s traditional meat sector is another issue. The livestock industry has sought to protect descriptors for what constitutes “meat,” most recently supporting a failed bid in the European Parliament to prevent plant-based products from using terms like “veggie burger.” (A similar law was successfully passed in France earlier this year.) Farm lobby groups argue that like vegan products, lab-grown meats could mislead consumers about what they’re really eating. SOURCE…
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