Food and Drug Administration officials and executives from companies that plan to make meat and seafood from animal cells made a clear case [on July 12th] for FDA to be the regulator of that industry.

The lab-grown meat industry has made many statements favoring FDA as the regulator while the conventional meat industry has been campaigning for the Agriculture Department, which inspects meat and poultry, to play a major role.

In a series of morning presentations…FDA officials explained the work their agency…has already done on the development of cell-based meat and seafood, and…the work FDA has done for years in the use of cells to develop medicines.

“Past experience with novel technologies and our extensive background in cell culture technology in the medical product space will help inform our approach to evaluate the safety of these cell-based food products,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said as he opened the conference.

There were no USDA officials scheduled to speak. A USDA spokesman said [July 12th], “As the new products begin to emerge in the marketplace, we look forward to working with the FDA and the public to tackle these issues.”

The question of conflicts between USDA and FDA did not come up during the morning session, but lawyers and lobbyists for both the cell-based industry and the conventional meat industry were present and willing to provide reporters with their interpretations of what U.S. laws say about which agency should be in charge.

Read full, original article: FDA signals it is way ahead on cell-based meat regulation