Should cultured meat be labelled as meat?
Clean Meat Hoax Articles from All-Creatures.org

FROM Barry Kent MacKay
September 2021

Meat is often labeled as being derived from “grass-fed” beef or “free-range” chickens or “dolphin-safe” tuna, or being “antibiotic free”, or so on. Meat from cultured cells is no different.

Red Jungle Fowl
Red Jungle Fowl, Painting by Barry Kent MacKay

Regarding The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) request under Docket No. FS-2020-0036 for public response to whether cultured meat derived from animals subject to the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA; 21 U.S.C. 601 et. seq.) or the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA; 21 U.S.C. 451 et. seq.) should be allowed to be labeled as “meat” on packages or containers sold to the public.

It absolutely should be in my opinion. In major part I believe this because it actually is (or will be) meat as meat has always been defined, as tissue, usually (but not exclusively) muscle tissue which in turn drives from the division of the appropriate cells. But there is more to it than that, in that “meat” is, in the English language, a descriptive, adjectival term, widely used, as in “the meat of the matter”, or “the red meat base”, meaning a core or foundational substance, in this case, the product that so often forms the foundation, or core, of the meal.

I am cognitive, and not dismissive, of the concern that an inattentive consumer could read the labelling and think that the product derived from a dead carcass, and not from a culture. But it is the latter fact that is the selling point of this new product – that it comes from a source that mitigates the concerns about animal welfare, the environment and, when appropriate, human health – that derive from “traditional” meat sources, that being the bodies of animals. That does not mean it is not meat, however, and it is no more logical to legislate a distinction that allows the consumer to know that a product derives from a culture than it does to allow the consumer to know that a product derives from a corpse.

Either way, I believe it behoves the producer-marketer to clarify in its own interest the source of the product, as, indeed, already happens. Meat is often labeled as being derived from “grass-fed” beef or “free-range” chickens or “dolphin-safe” tuna, or being “antibiotic free”, or so on. Meat from cultured cells is no different.

Finally, given the nature of this new product, and its origin, I think it would be substantively more deceptive to the consumer to legally mandate that it be labelled as something other than meat.


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