French parliamentarians against cell-based meat

The long-standing governing party is doing the same as Italy with its motion and is calling for “a ban on the production, processing and marketing of cell-based meat”. If the parliament of the populous French kingdom approves bill n°1965, a blocking minority in the committee responsible for EU authorisation is within reach: Italy recently became the first country in the world to ban the production, tasting and marketing of cell-based meat products, citing the need to protect its own agricultural production and food culture. Croatia is currently working on a similar draft and Austria is also rumoured to sympathise with the idea.

The background to the initiative is likely to be the protection of the meat industry – France is the largest beef exporter in Europe. On the other hand, the coalition government, which lost its majority in parliament in the last elections, is apparently being persuaded to co-operate with Les Republicains, which have moved to the right.

Genuine animal-based cheap imported meat, which is produced under dubious conditions, should not be replaced by synthetic, highly processed meat substitutes made from muscle stem cells, especially as some of them contain questionable additives. In the view of the applicants, this would mean replacing junk food with junk food.

The parliamentary group bases its argument on a fact-finding mission launched in mid-January 2023 by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, the stated aim of which was to investigate “products and processes in the cell industry”. In its report “Cellular foods: being vigilant to better manage and control the technology”, published in mid-April, the mission emphasises its “anthropological, ethical and cultural opposition to the development of cellular foods”. In the preamble to their legislative initiative, the parliamentarians write that such a “purely utilitarian view of food” is contrary to the French tradition, which sees food first and foremost as a cultural and social fact”.

The better sustainability balance of cell-based products is also not an argument in favour of cell-based meat for France’s former Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie (current minister: Marc Fesneau). The petitioners quote a parliamentary speech by Denormandie as follows: “Cellular meat, which I also call “paillasse meat”, i.e. a leg of lamb without lamb, a chicken breast without chicken, is in my view a total loss of orientation for our society. Only unscrupulous science could consider meat from the laboratory, from the test tube, as a solution.

France’s suspicion of cultured food is explosive because, although the EU approval authority EFSA checks the safety of the products, the decision on the market approval and labelling of the food is made in a non-transparent, downstream consultation process of the EU member states. The developers have already made their decision: instead of accepting the uncertain and lengthy EU process, the initial authorisation takes place in countries such as the USA or Singapore, which offer advice and support for companies on all issues.

The UK’s assessment of the sustainability and economic potential of the young sector is reflected in a funding initiative that will provide £2bn for biomanufacturing over the next 10 years.