During the month of June, the USDA approved the sale of lab-grown meat in the United States. The United States isn’t the first country to have lab-grown meat, the company Good Meat already sells it in Singapore, which was the first country to allow lab-grown meat. This topic has raised tons of questions and controversies as it has both some pros and cons.
The first pro is that it’s very sustainable. Lab-grown meat will bring the United States a more sustainable food production system and will require less land and water than traditional agriculture. Another pro is that growing chicken in labs would mean that animals wouldn’t have to be slaughtered. Lab-grown meat is an option to consider if you’re worried about getting E-coli or salmonella because it’s not subjected to the contaminants that can plague traditionally harvested meat.
A con is that lab-grown meat is developed in steel tanks from cells that come from animals, mainly chickens and it is more expensive than meat from slaughtered chicken. This topic has made a lot of consumers pretty skeptical due to them thinking that it’s unsafe. As of now, lab-grown meat will only be accessible in Bar Crenn in San Francisco and at one of celebrity chef’s José Andrés restaurants in Washington D.C. Once lab-grown meat reaches supermarkets they will have a USDA inspection certification and the labels will include “cell-cultured” to distinguish them from traditional meat. Although lab-grown meat is made in labs and not from slaughtered animals it is not considered vegetarian due to the fact that it is made from animal cells.