Cell-cultivated meat could be on sale in the UK within a few years, the food regulator has said, with applications for lab-grown steak, beef, chicken and foie gras already submitted, while another 15 applications are expected in the next two years.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) was awarded £1.6m of government funding on Tuesday to develop an efficient safety assessment process for the novel foods. It said the UK was an attractive market as it had a high number of vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians, a higher openness to new foods than many other European countries and a large financial sector to back startup companies.
