UPSIDE gets ok for cultivated meat

UPSIDE Foods has received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration for the process it uses to grow meat from cells.

It is the first researcher to gain an approval that the process the company uses to grow meat from chicken cells is safe. It is not approval for the product, just the process.

The agency said in a letter to the company in California that “we evaluated the information UPSIDE Foods submitted to the agency and have no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion.”

 The firm 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's pre-market consultation with the firm included an evaluation of the firm’s production process and the cultured cell material.

The voluntary pre-market consultation is not an approval process. Instead, it means that after our careful evaluation of the data and information shared by the firm, we have no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion, the agency said.