The Netherlands is to allow tasting sessions for cultured meat grown in a laboratory from animal stem cells. This will allow cultured meat producers to have their products tasted before starting the authorisation procedure for 'novel foods'. This will allow producers, if necessary, to adjust their product before the procedure to improve the taste experience.
This writes outgoing Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) Piet Adema and outgoing Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) Ernst Kuipers in a parliamentary letter. With the letter, they are responding to a motion by MPs De Groot (D66) and Valstar (VVD) calling for consultations with Dutch cultured meat producers on enabling tastings under controlled and safe conditions.
Code of conduct
The ministries of LNV and VWS have entered talks with two Dutch cultured meat producers and the interest group of biotechnology companies in the Netherlands HollandBio on enabling tasting sessions for cultured meat. Based on these talks, a Code of Practice (CoP) was drafted.
Ministers point out that cultured meat is an unauthorised 'novel food'. As yet, the meat has not been assessed for safety under the European novel food regulation. The CoP provides a technically harmonised framework, enabling producers to carry out tastings from their own responsibility.
Assess safety of tastings
The CoP helps assess the safety of tasting sessions. An independent expert committee carries out these assessments. This committee will be part of the Netherlands Cellular Agriculture Foundation (CAN), which coordinates the implementation of the plan for the development of an ecosystem for cellular agriculture on behalf of LNV. EUR 60 million has been made available for this plan from the National Growth Fund in October 2022.
Cultured meat producers to also invite investors and journalists to the tastings. The aim here is both to raise investments and to improve consumer acceptance of cultured meat.
With this, the Netherlands seems to want to play a pioneering role in cultured meat. While cultured meat can already be sold in the United States and Singapore, this is not the case in the European Union (EU). With the code of conduct, however, the Netherlands is now taking a step towards embracing cultured meat.
Italy bans production, sale and import
Within the EU, by the way, attitudes towards cultured meat vary widely. Whereas the Netherlands actually wants to facilitate tasting sessions for cultured meat, the Italian government actually wants to ban cultured meat. It is coming up with a bill to curb the production, sale and import of cultured meat in Italy.
In Spain, Brazilian food giant JBS has just started building the world's largest cultured meat plant. The company is investing some 38 million euros in the site, which should be able to produce more than 1,000 tonnes of cultured protein on an annual basis. In the medium term, the capacity is expandable to 4,000 tonnes.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Image: Andreas Lischka via Pixabay
