- In February, the US Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) filed a petition to the USDA arguing that lab-grown meat startups should not be able to call their products "meat," since they do not come from slaughtered animals. But this week, the
- While so-called "cultured meat" products are not available in restaurants or supermarkets yet, a number of startups are attempting to make it more commercially feasible.
- The debate will likely intensify.
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The battle between the beef industry and Silicon Valley’s lab-grown meat startups is heating up
The US beef industry is looking to the federal government in its fight against "cultured meat" startups.
For the first time, a major part of the US beef industry is taking aim at tech startups creating cultured meat — also known as lab-grown meat or clean meat — that's grown in a lab using animal cells.
The industry is divided on how to do this, however.
ecent venture capital investments could make that more commercially feasible. In January, Tyson Foods announced that it had invested in Memphis Meats, joining the startup's list of prominent backers, including Bill Gates, the food giant Cargill, and Richard Branson. a 5% stakeBeyond Meat
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Just could be the first to get its meat to stores. Last year, the company said it plans to do so by 2018. Memphis Meats and Mosa Meats say they will start offering their products to the public in 2021.
We have made progress in all areas that needed improvements — creating fat tissue, creating color, moving towards serum-free culturing — but we’re not there yet," Mosa Meats CEO Peter Verstrate previously told Business Insider.
Proponents of meat-mimicking foods like cultured meat and plant-based "meat" argue that it's more environmentally friendly than raising traditional livestock. Globally, traditional animal farming accounts for about 18% of greenhouse emissions, uses 47,000 square miles of land annually, and exhausts 70% of the world's water.
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