FDA Declares Lab-Grown Chicken ‘Safe to Eat’ — But Scientists, Food Safety Advocates Have Questions

Image credit: UPSIDE Foods

By  Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Describing the development as “a food revolution,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday said chicken produced using animal cell culture technology that takes living cells from chickens and grows the cells in a controlled environment is safe for human consumption.

Describing the development as “a food revolution,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday declared lab-grown chicken meat developed by Berkeley, California-based food-tech firm Upside Foods is safe for human consumption.

Upside Foods “will use animal cell culture technology to take living cells from chickens and grow the cells in a controlled environment to make the cultured animal cell food,” the FDA said.

The news — widely reported as an FDA “approval” of lab-grown meat — signifies the completion of the first, and biggest, of the three regulatory steps Upside Foods must complete before its “cultivated” chicken attains full approval and can be sold to the public, according to TIME.

Although two more steps must follow before the FDA can grant the product full approval, the agency’s language suggests the approval is a foregone conclusion.

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The FDA and some media outlets cheered the news — but others, including scientists and food safety advocates, expressed concerns about the adequacy of the FDA’s preliminary review process.

Experts who spoke to The Defender also questioned the safety of lab-grown meat, which is produced with gene-edited cells, and some scientists argued that, despite claims to the contrary, the production process for lab-grown “meats” is energy-intensive and not, as advertised, beneficial to the environment.

Some also questioned Upside Foods’ connections to figures and entities such as Cargill, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon Musk and co-founder of The Kitchen, “a growing family of businesses that pursues an America where everyone has access to real food,” and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

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In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the Center for Food Safety, questioned the FDA’s “pre-market consultation:”

“The FDA regulatory process in general relies on company testing of their products.

“The FDA, in this case, seemed to mostly review what the company sent them, but did not require additional tests and did not require the company to disclose its methods in a complete and transparent manner.”

The next steps in the regulatory process involve the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) before full approval is granted.

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“In short, the documents shared by the FDA and the Upside Foods Co. show us where more research and more transparent data are needed, but this is a woefully deficient review by the FDA.

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“The FDA’s review of the first-ever cell-cultured food for U.S. approval is a start, but grossly inadequate. In this ‘pre-market consultation,’ neither the company nor the FDA presented the actual data from tests looking at the effects of raising these cells in fetal bovine serum and enzymes from the intestines and pancreas of animals.

“Likewise, while the company notes that it uses genetic engineering to keep the cells growing, it fails to share which genes are being used. This is vital information that consumers and policymakers need to know to make informed decisions in the best interests of public health. We should make certain that genes linked to cancer are not being used.”

Experts raise alarm about genetically engineered cells and risk of cancer

Hanson also questioned the use of genetically engineered cells as part of the production process: “The company also notes that it is using genetic engineering to promote continuous growth of the cells. This is disturbing, in that it is likely that the genes being manipulated can promote cancers.

“Medical cell cultures use cancer cells for testing of drugs, etc., but cancer-causing genes should not be used in food production. Food additives that cause cancer are illegal. Unfortunately, the company does not list exactly which genes it is using for genetically engineered cells.”

The genetic engineering process employed by Upside Foods appears to involve CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a gene-editing technology that acts as a “precise pair of molecular scissors that can cut a target DNA sequence, directed by a customizable guide.”

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As recently reported by The Defender, while CRISPR has been touted as a potential solution to global hunger and food shortages, many scientists question this claim.

In an October 2022 interview with The Defender, Claire Robinson, M.Phil., managing editor of GMWatch, said the gene editing process may have unintended effects that can adversely impact human health:

“These were also risks with the old-style GMOs [genetically modified organisms], and they are still risks with these gene-edited GM plants with animals.

“The risks, if you’re gene editing them … are that there will be knock-on effects on the animals, welfare or health that we can’t anticipate, such as deformities or changes in the function of certain genes in the animal.”

Michael Antoniou, Ph.D., in an October 2022 interview with The Defender, agreed, stating that, “innately, gene editing also can bring about unintended DNA damage … even at the site of your intended edit or elsewhere in the DNA of your target cells, with unknown downstream consequences.”

A report published in the Journal of Genetics and Genomics in 2020 found CRISPR gene-editing in rice resulted in numerous unintended and undesirable on-target and off-target mutations.

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“Scientists know that these things are not ready yet to go into clinical trials,” she added. “On the whole, they’re certainly not ready to be used on [the public].”

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The company also claims that “at scale, we project cultivated meat will use 77% less water and 62% less land than conventional meat. And we expect these numbers to get better over time. We currently use 100% renewable energy at our production facility.”

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Scientists and experts who spoke to The Defender argued, however, that the process of cultivating lab-grown meat is heavily energy-intensive. According to Hanson:

“Many proponents of cell-cultured meat and poultry argue that it is a way of avoiding climate change. However, this ignores that cell-cultured processes are incredibly energy-intensive.”

In her recent interview with The Defender, Robison expressed a similar perspective, describing such claims of environmental friendliness as:

“A pipe dream, because the energy costs and the resource costs of bioreactor technologies are actually huge, and it simply won’t be possible, especially in a climate of rising energy bills.

“It simply won’t be possible to feed thousands or millions of people on the products of these technologies.”

Aside from high energy consumption, Hanson raised other potential environmental concerns involved with the process of developing lab-grown meat.

Hanson told The Defender:

“Cell cultures require the use of antibiotics to assure that the culture is not overtaken by pathogens. It is difficult to be sure that the cells that the company would take from poultry or meat animals are not infected with prions, viruses or bacteria.

“Finally, the waste produced by the culturing process needs to be disposed of. The chemicals from the waste will likely be dumped into local sewer systems. Without more data on the chemicals being used and the amounts of electricity being used, it is difficult to know how much environmental impact this production system has.”

Indeed, the FDA’s scientific memo accompanying its recent announcement, contained a three-page list of “potential identity, quality, and safety issues” involved with Uphill Foods’ manufacturing process, including:

Cells from different line or species inadvertently used.Carryover of adventitious agents such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites, and prions during isolation.Introduction of contaminants in laboratory reagents.Introduction of contaminants from animal-derived reagents (e.g. bovine serum, trypsin).Unintended effects of immortalization.Contamination, and facility environment contamination, with adventitious agents through inadequate sterilization of bioreactors.Presence of elemental contaminants (toxic heavy metals) after harvest.Presence of residual unintended material from genetic engineering.

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/lab-grown-chicken-meat-fda-safety/