Netherlands sets up new committee to review lab grown meat & seafood products
The Netherlands is one step closer to allowing cultivated meat tastings. The Dutch government has set up an Expert Committee to assess whether cultivated meat products can be tasted safely, and the first companies have already submitted their applications. The Cellular Agriculture Netherlands Foundation (CANS) hopes to allow the first tastings soon.
Tasting cultured meat is currently still banned in the European Union. The Netherlands is the first country in the EU, and one of only a handful worldwide, to make it possible. The CANS Expert Committee, which consists of a toxicologist, microbiologist, physician, and ethical expert, will assess cultured meat companies’ applications and determine whether it is safe to taste their products.
The Dutch cultivated meat and seafood companies Meatable, Mosa Meat, and Upstream Foods are delighted that the Netherlands is one step closer to allowing lab-grown meat. Meatable has already submitted its application for a tasting, the company said in a statement.
“We look forward to holding our first tastings in the Netherlands soon. We can’t wait to invite people to try our delicious pork sausages and experience for themselves that it doesn’t just look and taste like meat, it is meat,” Meatable CEO Krijn de Nood said. Meatable already held a tasting in Singapore and hopes its products will hit the supermarkets in that country this year.
Mossa Meat and Upstream Foods will submit their applications soon. “The Netherlands continues to be a global leader in sustainable food innovation, even as others in Europe appear to be taking a step backward at the height of our climate and biodiversity crises,” Mossa Meat CEO Maarten Bosch said.
CANS expects to finish assessing the first applications early this year and that tastings will start shortly afterward. “The tastings are an important step in evaluating this ‘novel food’ category and thus mark an important step towards introducing cultivated meat as a sustainable addition to traditional meat production,” the foundation said.
The Dutch government considers cultured meat an essential step in the climate transition. Last year, the government pushed millions into the Delft-based cultured meat company Meatable.
