Cultivated meat could hit UK shelves as government launches regulatory sandbox

The Food Standards Agency (FSA), in collaboration with Food Standards Scotland (FSS), has been awarded £1.6 million in funding from the government’s Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund (EBSF) to launch an innovative sandbox programme for cell-cultivated products (CCPs).

The Europe’s first cultivated meat regulatory sandbox aims to improve the food safety regulators’ scientific knowledge about CCPs, which are new foods made without using traditional farming methods such as rearing livestock or growing plants and grains. Using science and technology, cells from plants or animals are grown in a controlled environment to make a food product.

The UK is one of the largest potential markets for CCPs in Europe but currently, there aren’t any approved for human consumption here.

The FSA said the two-year sandbox programme will allow it to recruit a new team to work across the FSA and FSS, enabling them to make well-informed and more timely science and evidence-based recommendations about product safety and address questions that must be answered before any CCPs can enter the market.

It will also allow the agencies to better guide companies on how to make products in a safe way and how to demonstrate this to them.

“Ensuring consumers can trust the safety of new foods is one of our most crucial responsibilities. The CCP sandbox programme will enable safe innovation and allow us to keep pace with new technologies being used by the food industry to ultimately provide consumers with a wider choice of safe foods,” Professor Robin May, FSA chief scientific advisor, said.

As part of the sandbox, FSA will also be able to offer pre-application support to CCP companies and address key questions, for example around labelling.

The FSA’s sandbox will be the first of its kind in Europe and follows South Korea’s decision to create a regulatory innovation zone to support the development of novel food regulations and the scale-up of cultivated meat production processes.

Nonprofit and think tank the Good Food Institute Europe has welcomed the news, which it says could help grow the UK’s cultivated meat sector and ensure consumers have confidence in the safety and nutritional quality of this food.

However, it stressed that while the sandbox is likely to improve the regulatory pathway for cultivated meat, it is not a solution to the long-term funding challenges facing the FSA’s regulated product service – responsible for authorising new food products – which ministers must address in the forthcoming multi-year spending review.

“This announcement sends a clear message that the new government wants to capitalise on the strong investments made in British cultivated meat research and innovation over recent years by bringing products to market in a way that upholds the UK’s gold standard safety regulations,” Linus Pardoe, UK policy manager at the Good Food Institute Europe, said.

“Cultivated meat could play a key role in boosting food security, driving growth and helping us hit our climate targets. The sandbox is a welcome measure, but to fully realise the potential of cultivated meat, ministers must also provide a long-term boost to the FSA’s budget, enabling regulators to complete robust risk assessments within statutory timeframes.”

How is cultivated meat regulated?

Cultivated meat – which aims to deliver the same chicken, pork and seafood that people enjoy today, but made in fermentors instead of by farming animals – must go through a thorough risk assessment and be authorised by ministers before being sold in British restaurants and supermarkets. It has been authorised for sale in countries including the US, but not in the UK, where the FSA is currently reviewing at least four applications.

UK company Meatly announced earlier this year that its cultivated chicken pet food had been cleared for sale under a separate process overseen by the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs.

The FSA has frequently stated that its regulated product system is underresourced, with authorisations of new food and animal feed taking an average of 2.5 years although the statutory aim is 17 months.

What is a regulatory sandbox?

Sandboxes are controlled environments usually running for limited periods that enable businesses, academics and regulators to collaborate on designing new rules, standards and guidance.

Similar schemes have been introduced by other UK regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authority, enabling firms to ensure consumer protection safeguards are built into new products, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, helping companies safely develop medical devices.

The announcement of a regulatory sandbox follows the FSA’s recent confirmation that the UK government will enact initial reforms to the way a wide range of regulated products – including some alternative proteins – are brought to market.