Jurisdictions around the world are actively reviewing how they authorise novel foods. The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has a unique opportunity to completely rethink their approach after leaving the EU. A new report considers how their Novel Foods Regulatory Framework could be improved. New concepts such as collaborative regulation and conditional authorisation and supervision could significantly improve the regulatory approval process for foods such as cultured meat and seafood.

Our roundup of the latest cultured meat developments includes announcements from Mosa Meats, Meatable, Aleph Farms, Smart MCs, and UPSIDE, plus commercially-relevant research from Tufts, Kobe University, and Enzymit, FDA approval for consumption of gene-edited pigs, regulatory and governmental perspectives on cultured meat safety research priorities from Vireo and New Harvest, and new labelling requirements in Texas.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) has released a significant new report which identifies potential hazards that could be introduced during production of cultured or cell-based foods and considers the sequence of events that would need to take place for harm to occur to consumers – a critical first step in risk assessment for these new foods.

At Vireo, we keep close surveillance on commercialization and regulatory developments in cultured and alt-protein meat and seafood, and we have rarely seen as much activity as this! Here is our roundup of the latest developments…

The FDA announced today that they were withdrawing the “Food Standards; General Principles and Food Standards Modernization” rule, proposed in 2005 and were aiming to make FDA definitions and standards of identity for foods consistent with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and the standards used by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to inspect meat and poultry products.