With the tabling of the bill that closes the door to synthetic food in Italy, the debate over cultured meat is reignited. And even voices that once travelled together have parted ways on this issue.
Italy is the first country in the world to ban synthetic food. It is doing so with a bill tabled at the Council of Ministers on 28 March by the Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests Francesco Lollobrigida. The text prohibits operators in the agri-food and animal feed sector from using in the preparation of foods, beverages and feed foods or feed consisting of, isolated from or produced from cell cultures or tissues derived from vertebrate animals, as well as from selling, importing, producing for export and serving them. Infringers face fines of between €10,000 and €60,000, or up to 10 per cent of the company's total annual turnover.
"This is the first measure of this kind at an international level," Lollobrigida said at a press conference. "The legislation stems from certain health-related considerations based on the precautionary right provided for by the European Union when there is no certainty about the health effects of certain products." The minister continued: "Laboratory-produced food does not guarantee quality or wellbeing, and does not protect our production. It poses risks to biodiversity, since it would be less worthwhile to invest in livestock farming — a risk of social injustice whereby the wealthy eat well and the poor eat very low-quality food, suffering the consequences in terms of their health. It is a regulatory intervention that protects health, our production, our environment and a way of life that connects food production in the relationship between people, work, the land and livestock farming."
The Italian bill bans something that has not, in fact, been authorised yet. In the European Union, synthetic food falls under the category of so-called novel foods, which, in order to be cleared, require first and foremost authorisation from Efsa, the European Food Safety Authority, certifying that their consumption is safe. Efsa's safety assessments are a necessary step in the regulation of novel foods, since the work of the European and national decision-making bodies that authorise such products on the European market is based on this scientific advice. The assessment process is normally initiated when a company submits a request to the EU to market the novel foods (as happened with insects), a request that does not currently exist, according to statements made a few days ago by the EU Commission spokesperson responsible for health, Stefan de Keersmaecker.
On the assumption, however, that the European Union might clear synthetic food in the near future, last November Coldiretti had launched a petition to promote a law banning the production, use and marketing of synthetic food in Italy. Following the collection of half a million signatures, the government's draft bill was duly put forward. Following the tabling of the bill, Coldiretti thanked the government "for having helped to halt a dangerous drift that threatens the future of the national food culture, of the countryside and pastures, of the entire Made in Italy food supply chain and of economic democracy itself." "The truth is that this is not meat but a synthetic, engineered product — said president Ettore Prandini — which does not save the environment because it consumes more water and energy than many traditional farming operations, does not benefit health because there is no guarantee that the chemicals used are safe for food consumption and, moreover, is not accessible to everyone since it is in the hands of large multinationals."
At this point let us gain a clearer understanding of what synthetic food is. Synthetic food refers primarily to meat cultured in a laboratory from stem cells extracted from cells of living animals or from fresh meat and grown in bioreactors, as well as fish produced in the same way. There is also synthetic milk produced through precision fermentation based on inserting the genes of milk proteins into yeast. Synthetic meat and synthetic foods should not be confused with industrial plant-based meat and plant-based products, which are made from vegetables and pulses.
The first experiments on synthetic meat date back to 1912, the first patents were filed in the 1990s, while the first synthetic burger "was served" in 2013, but to date this product has only been given the go-ahead for commercialisation in Singapore, while the United States has declared laboratory-cultured chicken safe for human consumption. In Israel, a start-up developing synthetic meat has opened a kind of restaurant where it is possible to taste chicken cultured in cells, albeit at the consumer's own risk. Around a hundred companies and start-ups worldwide are working on the development of the product, counting on the support of multi-million-dollar investments from figures such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Bill Gates, and from traditional meat producers themselves. Research aims to improve the taste of synthetic meat and its cost, which has already fallen from the initial hundreds of thousands of dollars per piece of meat to a few tens of dollars. According to forecasts by McKinsey analysts, synthetic meat will become a $25 billion business by 2030, while for Barclays, the global market will reach as much as $140 billion.
Synthetic meat is presented as an alternative to conventional meat production: by growing meat in a laboratory, the slaughter of thousands of animals would be avoided, since only a few cells would be needed to produce tonnes of meat, resources such as water and land would be saved, and pollution from intensive livestock farming would be reduced. According to a 2013 study published on the European Commission's website, if all the meat produced in Europe were replaced by cultured meat, greenhouse gas emissions and the consumption of land and water would fall by 98.8 per cent, 99.7 per cent and 94 per cent respectively. The reduction would be greater in the case of cattle farming, while it would be less marked in the case of poultry farming.
As regards electricity, savings of 50 per cent would be achieved because bioreactors consume electricity. There is also the health dimension, between those who argue for the possibility of producing meat in a controlled environment and therefore without the need for antibiotics, and those who raise questions about the presence or absence of vitamin B12 in cultured meat, or of additives added to make it more similar to conventional meat. There are many aspects to consider regarding synthetic meat, and the issue is generating debate among environmentalists, animal rights advocates, scientists and producers.
The term "synthetic", meanwhile, is not to scientists' liking. As Roberto Defez, of the Institute of Biosciences and Bioresources at the CNR in Naples and a member of the ethics committee of the Fondazione Umberto Veronesi, has explained, the correct word would be "cultured", since these products are not the result of chemical processes and reactions, but of the cultivation of cells. According to Defez, moreover, banning synthetic food outright is a mistake, as a great deal of data still needs to be examined and its potential is considerable, from animal welfare to the saving of natural resources.
For Essere Animali, an organisation for animal rights, the bill banning synthetic food is a choice that works against animals and the environment while instead protecting intensive livestock farming: "Given that 'synthetic' meat does not exist, and that the term is deliberately used to demonise it, in the event of a green light for cultured meat from the European Union, we would be in favour," explains Claudio Pomo, head of development at Essere Animali. "As an organisation, our primary position is to support a protein transition that marks a shift from the consumption of animal proteins to that of plant proteins. That said, synthetic meat is less an alternative for animal rights advocates and ethical vegans — some would not eat it regardless, others might give it a try — and more, at the very least, an alternative to intensive livestock farming for those who wish to continue eating meat, one that rules out the killing and suffering of animals and is also safer and more sustainable. It is true that the cell culture technology still involves the use of animals for the extraction of cells, but continued research can bring improvements: significant efforts have been made, for example, to exclude the use of foetal bovine serum from the production process. This is why it is important to allow this sector to grow."
And can sustainable farming be an alternative to intensive livestock farming? "From an ethical standpoint, for us there is no truly sustainable form of farming because it always entails the killing of animals, but extensive farming is certainly an improvement on intensive farming. The ideal world is reached step by step, and the first step society urgently needs to take is a substantial reduction in meat consumption."
On the subject of extensive farming, cultured meat fails to convince the organic producers of Federbio, who last November signed the Coldiretti petition: "For us, meat produced in a laboratory cannot be the future, and we are opposed to this technological drift," explained Maria Grazia Mammuccini, president of Federbio. "There is no doubt that the intensive livestock farming system needs to be overcome because it is unsustainable from every point of view — ethical and environmental — and that consumption habits must change, reducing meat consumption in favour of plant proteins; as we explained in the booklet "Allevamenti. Sostenibile non basta: il modello è quello del bio", our perspective is grounded in bringing farming and the land closer together: this bond protects the welfare of animals that feed on healthy food and are able to graze, and is beneficial for the environment because animal waste increases soil fertility. For us, progress is a dimension in which the focus is not technology and multinationals, but people: technologies can be incorporated within an approach based on agroecology, in which farmers and local communities, with their knowledge and their connection to the land, are the protagonists of food production."
The same bond is championed by Slow Food. "We do not have a position of absolute opposition to synthetic food; at the moment we are applying the precautionary principle," declared Barbara Nappini, president of Slow Food Italia. "Certainly, though, synthetic meat for us is not quality food in relation to the idea we have of food, to the value we assign it in its connection with communities, territory and the environment. The real problem to be addressed right now is the 24 billion head of livestock being farmed on the planet — a historic record — and the 340 million tonnes of meat produced: an enormous imbalance that risks simply shifting from intensive livestock farming to laboratories producing synthetic meat. We have promoted a campaign on the protein transition aimed at reducing the consumption of animal proteins and increasing the consumption of plant proteins; we cannot, however, fail to acknowledge that there is also a form of sustainable farming that respects animal welfare, contributes to the protection of soil and biodiversity, has positive impacts on communities, and lends landscape and cultural value to territories."
