During his talk about cell-based products at the Red Meat Club, Mark Dopp, general counsel for the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), asked the audience who had heard about fake meat 18 months ago.
One person in a room of about 200 raised a hand to this question.
“One person,” he observed. “I had not.”
Dopp told the packed house that cell-based products were not really on any regulatory radars at that time either. When he went to the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about the products a year-and-a-half ago, he asked if they were paying attention to them.
“The answer was ‘no,’” he said.
“The funny thing about this is that never had so many people talked about a topic with such intensity over such a relatively short period of time, in particular about a product that isn’t even on the market. Think about it. This has dominated the conversation in Washington in the past 18 months.”
Dopp credited the February 2018 petition from the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association to define “meat” and “beef” as coming from animals or cattle raised and slaughtered traditionally with lighting the fire under the topic that got it discussed on Capitol Hill.
“The petition lit the fire,” he summarized. “This issue, believe it or not, has gone up to the White House and has been discussed by the National Economic Council, it’s been discussed on multiple occasions with the Domestic Policy Council. It has gone to the oval office, believe it or not.”
However, he covered this chapter in the history of fake meat with some regret and trepidation. He opined that, if the petition is granted, it will mean the FDA will regulate cell-based products, something he doesn’t want. He projected that FDA would regulate cell-based products the same way it does plant-based beverages that call themselves milk; namely, it won’t.
Though things have moved with head-snapping speed on the fake meat front, they are not yet on the market.
“The soonest we will see cell-based—those products that are derived from cells taken from a pig, a steer or a heifer, a chicken, a fish, a duck, which are all in play—is the end of this year and probably spilling into 2020,” Dopp projected.
“If we think the cell-based products are going to go away, we’re wrong.” — WLJ
