The FDA has issued its first ever approval on a safety consultation for lab-grown fish. That makes Wildtype only the fourth company to get approval from the regulator to sell cell-cultivated animal products, and its cultivated salmon is now available to order from one Portland restaurant.
Wildtype announced last week that the FDA had sent a letter declaring it had “no questions” about whether the cultivated salmon is “as safe as comparable foods,” the customary final step in the FDA’s approval process for lab-grown animal products. The FDA has sole responsibility for regulating most lab-grown seafood, whereas the task is shared with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for cultivated meat.
The FDA’s pre-market safety consultation is voluntary, but is “helpful for marketability,” IP lawyer Dr. Emily Nytko-Lutz, who specializes in biotechnology patents, explained to The Verge. “There are other pathways involving self-affirmation of safety as well as a longer food additive review process, but the FDA’s authorisation with a ‘No Questions’ letter is a middle ground.”
Wildtype salmon is now on the menu at Haitian restaurant Kann in Portland, Oregon, and the company has opened a waitlist for the next five restaurants to stock the fish. It joins Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies with permission to sell cultivated chicken in the US, while Mission Barns has been cleared by the FDA but is awaiting USDA approval for its cultivated pork fat. At a state level, the situation is more complicated, with eight states issuing bans on lab-grown meat as the technology becomes a conservative talking point.
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As much as I'm all for lab produced meats, I'm against the price to buy it. Lab grown salmon is cool and all that, but until it's cheaper than farm raised salmon, (most of what you can buy in a grocery store), it's merely something for wealthy people to eat to make themselves feel better about themselves. And not something the poor can easily afford or even access.
And this is an issue with all Eco-friendly products from lab grown meats to EV's to solar panels, None of those things do the average plebe any good.
It's a necessary step on the way to it being cheap though, you can't just jump to mass scale from nothing. At each step of more production there is a lot of engineering to do.