Italy teams up in Brussels with France and Austria against lab-grown meat

Brussels – Italy is teaming up in Europe with France and Austria (and others) against laboratory-grown meat. Which are still not allowed to be traded in Europe. “Food production practices based on artificial cells grown in laboratories pose a threat to primary agriculture-based approaches and to the genuine food production methods that underpin the European agricultural model.” reads a note-viewed by Eunews-signed by Italy, France, and Austria with the support of the Czech, Cypriot, Greek, Hungarian, Luxembourg, Lithuanian, Maltese, Romanian, and Slovak delegations to bring opposition to laboratory-grown food to the attention of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council. The item will be addressed in the “Miscellaneous” discussions of the meeting.

Even though, misleadingly, the document is titled “The role of the CAP in safeguarding quality, primary agriculture-based food production.”, the delegationswill try to push the discussion against these “new practices that include meat production using stem cell technology, which requires tissue from live animals,” that is, against laboratory-grown meat. The ministers will essentially ask the European Commission to initiate a public consultation on the issue and launch a proper impact assessment before allowing anything for sale.

“The development of this new production of lab-grown food raises many issues that need to be thoroughly discussed among member states, the Commission, stakeholders, and the general public,” the document, scheduled for discussion tomorrow, still reads. During from the last Agriculture and Fisheries Council held in December, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, had told reporters that he had taken part at the initiative of the Austrian minister, Norbert Totschnig, and with the French minister, Marc Fesneau, in a meeting to talk about a common position on cultured foods, to be presented later.

A time has come. The ministers will demand that “prior to any authorization” for trade, the “Commission initiate a genuine public consultation on laboratory-grown meat” and a “comprehensive, fact-based impact assessment on artificial meat before any authorization for sale and consumption.” This impact assessment, the document continues, should address “ethical, economic, social and environmental issues, as well as nutritional, health safety, food sovereignty and animal welfare issues.” Moreover, it goes on to say, “according to EU regulations on the definition of meat products, cell-based products can never be called meat. We therefore call on the Commission to ensure that artificially laboratory-grown products are never promoted as or confused with authentic foods.”

Italy has been in the forefront in Brussels for months to discourage any kind of intervention by the European Commission to authorize synthetic meat for trade. In November, it passed a bill to ban the production and sale of “synthetic food and feed,” although no products grown in vitro or in a laboratory have been authorized for marketing in Europe for the time being. The laboratory-grown meat – as well as protein intake from insects – are examples of so-called ‘novel foods’ (novel foods, ed.), as those foods that were not consumed “in a relevant way” before May 1997 are defined by Brussels. The category includes novel foods, foods from new sources, new substances used in food products as well as new ways and technologies for food production.

Brussels, for its part, has always emphasized consumers’ freedom of choice on what to eat, reminding them that prior to any marketing authorization, every application will be subjected to an extremely strict evaluation by Efsa (European Food Safety Authority). No application for marketing authorization of cultured meat has been received in Brussels at this time.