By Fiona Broom
Key points:
- Food Standards Australia is expected to make a decision by March next year
- Australian companies say the US decision will pave the way for Australia
- Cultured meat patties will initially sell for $5 to $6
Would you pay $5 for a lab-grown hamburger? You might get the clabhance if a plan to have cultured meat on Australian shelves as soon as next year becomes a reality.
The national food standards body is assessing an application from a luxury cultivated meat company, while others are watching to see how things shake out.
This follows the US agriculture department’s approval of California-based firms Upside Foods and Good Meat to sell chicken meat labelled as “lab-grown” or “cell-cultivated”.
The US is the second country in the world to approve the sale of lab-grown chicken, following Singapore.
Australia’s first application to sell cultured meat is from cell-based meat company Vow.
The regulator expects to consult on that application in August and decide by March, Glen Neal, general manager of Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) risk management and intelligence, told the ABC.
Cell-grown meat is not the same as plant-based meat, which is produced from plant sources such as soy, pea, fungi, wheat and rice.
Cultured meat begins with cells from a living animal, a fertilised egg or a bank of stored cells. The cells are then grown in steel tanks – known as cultivators or bioreactors — and fed nutrients similar to what animals would eat.
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