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When Singapore became the first country to trade and sell vegan meat commercially this month, Ira van Eelen couldn’t help thinking that the continent was wrong. making the headlines.
“What’s happening in Singapore should have been happening in Europe,” Van Eelen, a board consultant for Eat Just, the company that produced laboratory-grown chicken there, said an Singapore.
Her father, the Dutch scientist Willem van Eelen, invented and patented the technology that Eat Just hoped to launch in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch Food Safety Authority (NVWA) closed their request to hold a tasting in 2018, saying it had not received EU approval.
The Eat Just experience highlights what entrepreneurs describe as a continent too reliable and too slow to adopt technology that could reduce agricultural emissions and erode food security – two of the EU’s proven priorities. .
Laboratory-grown meat – aka or slaughter or farmed meat – is made using muscle stem cells extracted from an animal and then grown in a large steel “bioreactor”. The cells are then transferred to an aqueous gel where they end up in a sinewy layer.
The whole process can take place in a restaurant-sized space and there is no need to build intensive livestock on land or kill methane-zoned animals. The launch of Singapore shows that the technology can be commercially viable, having been dismissed as too expensive. The four-course chicken dinner at a 1880 restaurant costs $ 23 and prices are expected to fall further.
But while Asia, the United States and even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are jumping on the meatless bandwagon, European policymakers have shown less desire for the technology.
“Is this really the society we want for our children?” tweet French Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie in response to the Eat Just debate in Singapore. “Me, NO. I say clearly, ”Denormandie continued. “Meat comes from life, not from laboratories. Count me that meat in France stays natural and not artificial! ”
San Francisco-based companies such as Eat Just say such a complaint puts Europe at risk of missing out on a region that analysts are predicting. predict that it could make up more than a third of the global meat market by 2040.
“We have so much great technology in Europe that we could be up there with anyone, but if they don’t prepare differently we lose out. out and losing a lot of time, “Van Eelen warned.
Safe but slow
Part of the issue is the European regulatory process. Meat grown in a lab must be approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) under modern EU legislation. The bloc cleared those laws in 2018, but it can take three years or more for applications to be approved and a green light by EU country representatives in the so-called PAFF committee.
Van Eelen said she was crying when Dutch NVWA closed the Eat Just bid to hold a tasting in 2018, sealing samples of cultured duck chorizo at three restaurants because the EU was not getting permission from the product.
“I started crying quietly in my car… I had to stop by the roadside,” she recalled.
“It was very unfortunate that my government did not understand what we were offering,” Van Eelen said. “For me personally, it was very painful, because I felt I had given a great gift to my country that they did not want to open. ”
The NVWA referred to requests for comment on the issue to their statement at the time that influenced the transition to new EU food legislation. Van Eelen argues about this, saying that sales to restaurants were made before the legislation came into force.
“The fact is that they had not established a regulatory framework for raising meat at the time,” said Josh Tetrick, CEO and founder of Eat Just. “I wish that wasn’t true, but it was – and as a result it wasn’t launched. ”
Wolfgang Gelbmann, chief scientific officer of EFSA’s nutrition unit, said there are potential dangers in the process of growing meat in a laboratory. The cells used in bioreactors could be contaminated, for example, and there is a possibility of “dysregulation” of multiplied cells.
“You have to replace all the nutrients that cells normally receive through the bloodstream, the intercellular and micro and macronutrients,” Gelbmann noted. “These cells need to be replaced. to the middle and there is no immune system in this bioreactor, so we ask … how are these reactors kept from microbial contamination? ”
However, he said, the challenges of the technology are not inevitable and it is “certainly possible” to produce safe in-vitro meat.
At the moment, however, the long regulatory delay is encouraging more European companies to look beyond the EU ‘s borders as they try to move to the market quickly. A company has not yet applied for an EU modern food permit for their lab meat product.
Mosa Meat, for example, is based in the Dutch city of Maastricht and hopes to bring the first cellular meat products to market in 2022, according to COO Peter Verstrate. However, he said there was “no doubt” that their first offers would be sold outside Europe due to the lengthy approval process.
“We will not be shy about bidding elsewhere if that brings us to market faster,” Verstrate said. “That’s not a threat, just the reality of life.”
Benjamina Bollag, founder and CEO of the UK’s start-up High Steaks, agreed that Europe was lagging behind. A few months of extra waiting time for regulatory reasons would not affect its plans, she said, but “if it’s three times the time, it doesn’t make sense” to launch it in Europe.
Tetrick said that the next major release of Eat Just is likely to be in the US, hopefully in 2021. “It looks like US regulators are a little further than EU regulators on this,” he said notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is already collecting information on cell – based meat for its labeling regulations.
Fresh meat vs old meat
Pushing back is a potential issue from the traditional European meat sector.
The livestock industry has tried to defend descriptions for the contents of “meat,” recently backing a failed bid by the European Parliament to ban plant-based products from becoming using terms such as “veggie burger.” (A similar law was successfully passed in France earlier this year.) Farm lobby groups argue that vegetarian meat, like vegan products, could hurt consumers. deceive about what they eat.
“Let’s call a spade a spade,” read a letter put forward by Europe’s six largest animal meat lobby groups, ahead of a vote in Parliament in October. He argued that “Europe”[meat] The imitation industry has taken advantage of a European gap to take over these powerful common names. ”
One of the parliamentary changes that was eventually rejected in October was an attempt to maintain the use of the word meat “only for edible parts of the animals. ”He pointed out that meat descriptions may not apply for any process that could“ alter the fibrous muscle structure of the meat, ”which could be another obstacle to the cultured meat industry.
“If the more political side of the bidding process starts to get in the way, I’d definitely see [our] activity moves outside Europe, ”said Verstrate from Mosa Meat.
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