The European Commission and some EU member states recently rejected Hungary’s proposed ban on lab-grown meat.

The European Commission and some EU member states recently rejected Hungary’s proposed ban on lab-grown meat. As there are concerns about the safety, production, and marketing of lab-grown meat, the Hungarian proposal aimed to protect human health and European culinary traditions from new food technologies that are not properly regulated.

In fact, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have developed a 146-page document with a wealth of scientific literature to share current knowledge and inform consumers and all interested parties about all potential hazards that may occur during all the steps of lab-grown meat production, starting from cell procurement and selection, to cell growth and replication in bioreactors.

The results of this meta-analysis confirmed a list of 53 health hazards, such as contamination with heavy metals, microplastics and nanoplastics, allergens that can cause severe allergic reactions, chemical contaminants, toxic components and antibiotics. FAO and WHO experts agreed that while many of these hazards are already present in some conventionally produced foods, others could be particularly serious and unacceptable for human health, such as the potential carcinogenic effects of these products.

The unknown effects of cell proliferation in bioreactors

Researchers are particularly concerned about the mechanism of cell proliferation in bioreactors, where there is a high risk of uncontrolled mutations, and the use of growth factors and hormones, either from serum or non-animal sources, used in bioreactors to induce and accelerate cell growth. There is a real risk that these bioactive molecules could interfere with and disrupt human metabolism and trigger the onset and development of cancers. In addition, experts are concerned about the occurrence of allergens resulting from the metabolism of substances added during cell proliferation and differentiation.

Before lab-grown meat is placed on the market, food safety for consumers must be addressed, and it must be ensured that it does not cause any damage to health. Yet the Commission declared that the Hungarian draft law banning the production and sale of lab-grown meat was unjustified and potentially harmful to the EU single market.

Some agree with Hungary; some don’t

According to documents published on the TRIS database, the Budapest law, notified to the EU on 10 July, breaches the EU’s Novel Foods Regulation and threatens the free movement of goods in the single market. Countries such as Sweden, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic have also opposed the Hungarian proposal, stating in comments and detailed opinions that there is no scientific evidence to support the ban.

Other European nations are not prepared or willing to accept lab-grown meat so easily. These include Austria, France, Italy, and nine other EU countries, which will argue that lab-grown meat poses a threat to “real food production methods”, at least until it is deemed safe. For this reason, the precautionary principle should be applied, as it is for medicines because the process for lab-grown meat is pharmaceutical grade, not food grade.

In addition to protecting human health and the environment, sustainable agricultural production and preserving the traditional rural way of life justify the introduction of regulation. It is not clear how the safety of cell-based technology can be guaranteed to avoid potential health risks to consumers, and therefore, regulation is necessary. Traditional livestock-based meat production is paramount for the future of the domestic food economy, particularly for the sustainability of food production and the maintenance of the countryside. Increased production of lab-grown meat may harm the agricultural sector and rural livelihoods.

What about the environment?

In terms of environmental impact, new research from Oxford University shows that in the long term, production in energy-intensive bioreactors could be worse for the environment than livestock in terms of CO2 emissions. The latest calculations show that if we wanted to meet the additional demand for meat by 2030 exclusively with lab-grown meat, we would have to build almost 150,000 bioreactors, with the impact of producing this artificial product being more than double (352 million tonnes of CO2e) that of meeting the demand through natural livestock farming (150 million tonnes of CO2e).

That is why farmers’ organisations and PDO consortia from the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain are mobilising in opposition to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The organisations oppose the updated Novel Food Guidelines published at the end of September, particularly the new application requirements for products derived from cell cultures.

Collecting sufficient scientific data and information necessary for exposure assessment and risk characterisation is essential to carry out an adequate risk assessment of cell-based foods. We still need to be very cautious as there is too little information and data on the true safety of lab-grown meat to make informed decisions.