Italy has become the first country in Europe to ban lab meat in support of its farmers, a move that’s being closely followed by a number of other EU states
The main reasons behind the ban by Italy were that lab-grown meat, or cultivated meat, was not ethical, created public health concerns, and issues surrounding sustainability and transparency.
Italian MPs supported the law banning the production, sale, or import of cultivated meat or animal feed, calling the legislation “a defence of Italian tradition.”
“Italy is the world’s first country safe from the social and economic risks of synthetic food,” says Italy’s agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida.
“We’re safeguarding our food, our system of nutrition, by maintaining the relationship between food, land, and human labour that we have enjoyed for millennia. We have to protect our workers, our agricultural entrepreneurs and citizens who have the right to eat well.”
At the moment, there’s no lab meat sold in Europe, and such a market could only get the go-ahead if approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Ahead of any such moves, Italy already has proposed and approved a national ban on the sale of cell-based agriculture products, but this is being examined by the EU for a possible breach of European single market rules.
During a recent meeting of Europe’s agriculture ministers, some EU States argued that supporting lab-grown meat was in direct contradiction to how the European livestock sector operates with its safeguards for traditional farming methods and public health safety.
A document presented at the meeting said: “These practices represent a threat to primary farm-based approaches and genuine food production methods that are at the very heart of the European farming model.”
This note was written and supported by Italy, Austria, France, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Slovakia.
However, some other EU countries, such as The Netherlands and Denmark, argued that there was a greater need to find alternative sources of protein in the future to meet population growth, and thus were open to investigating lab meat more.
While the meeting of the ministers was taking place several farmers groups protested outside while some other people voiced their support for lab meat.
Some scuffles broke out between the opposing groups as they tried to make their voices heard, but no one was seriously injured.
A vote by the MPs during the meeting in Parliament backed the bill to ban lab meat by 159 votes to 53 with a fine of up to €60,000 for anyone who broke the law.
Cultivated meat, presently, has only been approved for human consumption by the US and Singapore.
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