Did cultured meat just get approved for sale in Europe?

Last week, Czech start-up Bene Meat Technologies announced that their cultured meat had been included on the EU Feed Material Register specifically for use in cat and dog food. This is great news, but it's not the same as approval for sale for human consumption (nor have they claimed this).

There is also an important distinction between EU approval process for "feed materials" and "feed additives". The process of gaining approval for a feed additive requires submitting a dossier to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) with a description of the production method, manufacturing and intended uses of the additive, safety and efficacy studies, etc. In contrast, feed materials, primarily used to meet animals' needs for energy, nutrients, minerals, dietary fibers, etc., are not expected to be chemically well-defined except for basic nutritional constituents. They are required to be safe for animal consumption, safe for the environment, and they must be accurately labelled and traceable (as outlined in  EU Regulation No 767/2009), but there is no need to go through the EU novel food regulatory pathway and submit an extensive dossier to the EFSA before they are included on the EU Feed Material Register.

We congratulate Bene Meat Technologies on the first cultured meat feed material registration. But, based on the experiences of Upside Foods and Good Meat in the US and Singapore, and the comments and concerns shared by regulators in Phase II of the Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (published by Vireo and New Harvest earlier this year), obtaining EU approval for human consumption of cultured meat will be a much more significant challenge.