New guidance suggests that although such products should be considered ‘of animal origin’ they require different safety controls from traditional meat products. By Nick Hughes.
Food products made from animal cells do not satisfy the legal definition of meat for food hygiene purposes, according to UK regulators.
Last week, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) published their first set of guidance for cell-cultivated products – foods that are grown in a controlled environment from cells isolated from animals or plants.
The regulators deemed that cell-cultivated products made using animal cells should be legally defined as “products of animal origin”, which are subject to more stringent food safety regulations and border checks than most non-animal products. However although they acknowledged cell-cultivated products are associated with terms such as “lab-grown meat”, “cultured meat”, and “slaughter-free meat”, they said they do not believe such products satisfy the legal definition of meat for hygiene purposes.
In practice, this means that cell-cultivated products made in laboratory environments will require a different set of safety controls than traditional meat produced in abattoirs and cutting plants.
Meat is defined in legislation as edible parts of animals including blood. “We do not consider a final cell-cultivated product to be an edible part of any of the animals listed in that regulation,” stated the FSA and FSS guidance. “Furthermore, parts of that regulation [….] cannot be readily applied to cell-cultivated products as they apply to “meat”, as they concern practices that involve the presence of animals (for instance, slaughter hygiene).”
The guidance, which covers animal cells only and not cultivated products made from plant cells, is the first output from the FSA and FSS’s two-year ‘sandbox programme’ for cell-cultivated products. The collaborative programme was launched in February to help companies evidence that they are making cultivated products in a safe way with the ultimate aim of smoothing the approvals process. Current industry participants include UK-based Hoxton Farms and Roslin Technologies alongside producers of cell-cultivated products from The Netherlands, USA, France and Australia.
Labelling questions
The new guidance does not cover product naming and so does not necessarily mean cell-cultivated products will be unable to describe themselves as meat when being offered to the end consumer. Exactly how cell-cultivated products will be labelled once they are approved for sale in the UK market is actively being considered through the sandbox programme.
Under current food labelling law, how a product can be described depends on whether there’s a legal name, which there isn’t currently for cell-cultivated products, and whether there’s a customary name, which again there isn’t since these are novel food products. If neither exists, manufacturers must use a descriptive name that tells consumers what the product is.
In practice, this means cell-cultivated products will need to be clearly distinguishable from meat produced in a traditional way on labels and menus. For example, a cell-cultivated product labelled simply as ‘chicken’ would not meet legal requirements for labelling to be “clear” and “not misleading”, and would need to indicate it has been produced from cells.
Plant-based meat alternatives are already facing future restrictions in what they can legally be called. In October, the European Parliament voted to ban the use of words like “burger” or “steak” to describe plant-based variants – a decision that has yet to be ratified by the European Council and Commission.
Globally, Singapore, Israel and the US have been leading the charge in clearing the way for cultivated meat products to be available for people to try and buy. There are currently no cell-cultivated food products authorised for sale in the UK, although cultivated meat company Meatly received approval to sell lab-grown chicken to pet food manufacturers last year.
The UK’s decision to class products from animal cells as being of animal origin aligns with the verdict of the European Commission. The FSA said this would help facilitate a consistent approach across the four home nations given that Northern Ireland currently follows EU rules on food law as part of the Windsor Agreement.
“Consumers can be reassured that these innovative new foods will meet the same rigorous safety standards as conventional foods,” said Thomas Vincent, deputy director of innovation at the FSA. “The sandbox programme is allowing us to fast-track our regulatory knowledge to reduce barriers for emerging food technologies without compromising on safety standards.”
The FSA and FSS have also published new guidance on allergenicity assessments and how nutritional quality will be assessed as part of the approval process for all cell-cultivated products, with further pieces of guidance set to be released throughout 2026.
