Welcome to Pluripotent — it’s Friday, July 31st, and I’ve just finished binge watching the first five episodes of HBO’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Feel free to interrupt said binge-watching by sending tips through direct message and following me @chasepurdy.
NEW YORK — The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week held and released a webinar detailing their cooperative effort to regulate cell-cultured meat. All said, it’s a 20-minute rehashing of information people already know. Still, it left open an important question for cultured meat companies.
Who exactly will be in the room at what is called “time of harvest”?
Representing the FDA in the webinar was Jeremiah Fasano, a consumer safety officer who specializes in biotechnology within the agency’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. As described by Fasano, the time of harvest is the moment at which the FDA will hand much of its oversight responsibilities to the USDA.
This is an important step, in which the cultured cells are removed from the controlled and sterile cell-culture environment, are no longer maintained in a living state, and are subjected to conventional food processing methods.
For some in the space, this explanation did not provide a clear sense of exactly what regulation might look like. Will USDA be present when living cells are harvested from a physical bioreactor? During the point in which raw ingredients are combined to create a finished product? Or when the product is ready for packaging?
Think of it through the lens of a relatively simple processed food product, something like a chicken nugget. Will the USDA be interested in the paste-like tissue being pulled from the bioreactor? Or the product once it’s been assembled into a nugget? Both?
Finding answers to these questions will be important for logistical reasons. What if different stages of processing take place on different sites? How many hours a day will inspectors be on site — and for inspectors attuned to working a 9am to 5pm job, will the rhythm of Silicon Valley’s cultured meat companies align with that routine?
These may seem like simple questions, but it’s understandable that cultured meat companies would be eager to have them answered. After all, for years they’ve been used to operating at their own pace and on their own terms. The arrival of federal inspectors will signify a significant change in what’s expected of their operations and how they’ll be seen — literally.
In other news…
Fun to see Harvard University nutrition expert (and member of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee), Dr. Frank Hu, has cell-cultured meat on his radar, per The Guardian.
Artemys Foods’ Jess Krieger chatted with Food Navigator about entering the cultured meat space and why she prefers the term ‘cultivated meat.’
As of July 31, more than 38,600 meatpacking plant workers have been diagnosed with Covid-19 across at least 392 plants, according to FERN.
Geltor raised a whopping $91.3 million to continue their work to make animal-free collagen.
David Kay of Memphis Meats discovered banana milk for the first time. A reminder that the idea was born in the halls of a big bank.
That’s all for now. Until next time, I’ll continue to be envious of everyone who has been able to add New Harvest’s cultured meat masks to their collection of tools to be socially-distant.