I have asked, over multiple estimate sessions, about the approval process for lab-grown meat. While I acknowledge and understand Food Standard Australia New Zealand’s (FSANZ) need to take their time with this decision, the process seems more about ticking the boxes rather than conducting a serious investigation into the potential health impacts of this Frankenstein food product.
Australia has the highest quality farm produce globally, with the capability to both feed our population and export protein. There is absolutely no need for lab-grown meats. The process of cultivating muscle cells from live cattle via biopsy in a bio-reactor to create meat, bears a resemblance to how cancer cells replicate.
Lab-grown meat has the nutritional value of whatever it has been cultivated in. There’s no chance this product will match the nutritional value and safety of real meat.
One Nation believes that before lab-grown meat is approved, extensive generational testing must be conducted to assess the impact of this product on human cells, including testing for potential damage to reproductive capacity and to the development of cancers – a process known as genotoxicity testing. If such testing were performed on rats (a perfectly valid method), it would have been completed by now. The lack of such testing is alarming and begs the question – why has it not been conducted?
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. At last estimates, I asked about genotoxicity of products grown in a bioreactor—lab meat. Your answer on notice—and thank you for providing this—was: ‘There are no safety concerns, including genotoxicity.’ Is that still your position?
Dr Cuthbert: Yes, it is.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Your answer doesn’t address my question. I didn’t ask if you had no genotoxicity concerns. I asked, and now repeat: have you received genotoxicity testing on this or a similar product from a suitable jurisdiction?
Dr Cuthbert: I’ll pass to Dr O’Mullane, who is the general manager for risk management and intelligence and is managing the assessment.
Dr O’Mullane: Thank you for the question. If I could just go back to a statement around genotoxicity or carcinogenicity, and that is that the starting material for these types of cell based meat products are cells taken from healthy animals. They are not cancerous cells and they are not cancer cells. They are cells that are harvested from connective tissue, from muscle tissue, from skin tissue. They are then taken into a bioreactor and they are selected. There are natural variants that can live for a reasonable period of time in that bioreactor under very specific and controlled conditions, along with tissue culture media components. Taken outside of that bioreactor, they are not capable of surviving. They are not going to survive food processing activities or cooking; they would certainly not survive through the human digestive tract. So our position very clearly is that the cells that are used in terms of the quail application that we’re currently looking at don’t pose any cancer concerns. They’re not cancerous. That view is held not specifically for these quail cells but certainly in a more general sense via the US Food and Drug Administration who have made statements in this effect and also the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, who provided a report last year around cell cultured foods, and they have made similar statements. To your question on genotoxicity data, I don’t believe that genotoxicity data was provided as part of this application. I will confirm that. So the characterisation of the safety risks are very much around the molecular characterisation of the cells and what is involved with the actual culture media. So we are confident that these cells and the actual products that are generated from those cells aren’t going to pose a human health and safety concern.
Senator ROBERTS: So you have not received genotoxicity testing on this or a suitable product from a suitable jurisdiction?
Dr O’Mullane: I don’t believe we have. But I will confirm that on notice if I may.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. How can you say then that you have no genotoxicity testing concerns if you haven’t done or seen genotoxicity testing?
Dr O’Mullane: Based on the points that I’ve already made. It is based on the actual characteristics of the cells. These are entirely normal cells that have been taken out of healthy animals. So there is no plausible reason to consider that they would have any sort of cancer or genotoxicity potential.
Senator ROBERTS: So you’re relying upon the FDA in America?
Dr O’Mullane: We are not relying on the FDA. As part of this particular application, certain data have been provided. We are still going through an active process of scientific evaluation which is still running for at least another six months. On the basis of what we have seen to date, we went out with a first public consultation ending in February this year. The risk assessment that we put out very clearly said that there were no human health and safety concerns. If there is any additional information that might be available, either from yourself or others, that could be submitted, we would certainly be happy to look at that and see whether we needed to make any sort of adjustments. But, based on the evidence that we’ve seen to date, we are confident in the safety of this particular cell based quail.
Senator ROBERTS: But you’ve done no genotoxicity testing. What is the state of approval for Vow Group’s application to produce imitation quail meat in a bioreactor for human consumption?
Dr O’Mullane: I mentioned that there was a first public consultation round earlier in the year. We’re due to go out with a second public consultation round in July. Then there will be a period of time where we will evaluate any submissions. That second so-called call for submissions report will include the proposed legal drafting: things like labelling that will appear in the Food Standards Code. There will be an opportunity for stakeholders to comment on our legal drafting in terms of its clarity and enforceability. We then go through a period of proposing a so-called approval report for the FSANZ Board to make a decision. At the moment we’re looking at around the end of the year, probably in December. Once the FSANZ Board has made a decision, there’s a 60-day window where that decision is notified to food ministers, who then have the opportunity to call for a review of that decision or not. Following that, if everything goes smoothly, it would be gazetted and then go into food law.
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve in embarked on consultation?
Dr O’Mullane: This is considered a major application, so we’re required to undertake two rounds of public consultation. We’ve undertaken one round, and we’re about to take—
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve finished the first round. You’re about to start the second.
Dr O’Mullane: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Then the approvals will continue without any further testing, and, even if you give approval, it will be the subject of the health ministers and the states to object if they want to.
Dr O’Mullane: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Have they got the capacity to do their own testing? They’d be relying on you.
Dr O’Mullane: Yes. They would certainly provide us with very detailed commentary around why they were calling for the FSANZ Board to review its decision.
Senator ROBERTS: Who decides use of the word ‘meat’, which the public rightly associates with an animal product, not a laboratory product?
Dr O’Mullane: In relation to the current quail application, as part of the first public consultation we’ve looked at possible options for labelling and what it may be called. Where we are heading to at the moment is either ‘cell cultured’ or ‘cell cultivated’ quail. Based on the consumer feedback that we’ve had, that seems to be best understood by consumers. In terms of the use of the term ‘meat’, you’re right that there is a specific definition of meat in the Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Code, which is defined there. But if the term ‘meat’ is used in an accurate context so as not to mislead consumers it could potentially be used in a different context.
Senator ROBERTS: What do you mean?
Dr O’Mullane: For example, use of the term ‘milk’. Milk is defined in the Food Standards Code, but milk can also be used in the context of soy milk or oat milk. In that context it’s not misleading because consumers generally know that it’s not from an animal, similar to the use of the term ‘beer’ in ginger beer or ‘bread’ in shortbread. It’s around the context of use that we need to look.
Senator ROBERTS: Your reply also states that FSANZ is a member of the World Health Organization’s technical working group on cell based food as well as an OECD expert group on cell based food. Can Australians have confidence this decision is all your own work instead of being guided by foreign commercial interests?
Dr O’Mullane: We’re still going through an active process at the moment. The food hasn’t actually been approved. If it is approved by the FSANZ Board, it will be because there is a scientific weight of evidence supporting the safety and suitability of the cell cultured quail. If it does end up on supermarket shelves, consumers can be confident that that’s the case and that the food will be labelled appropriately so that consumers can understand the true nature of the food and that they can make informed purchasing decisions. Senator ROBERTS: But you’re doing no further testing, including no genotoxicity testing.
Dr O’Mullane: We don’t specifically do testing. We rely on the evidence that the applicant has provided, and there are—
Senator ROBERTS: You rely on the evidence the applicant has provided?
Dr O’Mullane: We rely on the evidence the applicant has provided in the context of the legislative requirements to provide certain information, data and studies. That is supplemented by our own scientific searches of the literature.
Senator ROBERTS: This is a new field, yet you’re relying on regulations or legislation made in this building?
Dr O’Mullane: We’re relying on scientific information. It’s a weight of scientific evidence that will then support the decision one way or the other about whether to permit this cell cultured quail product.
Straight out NO from me – I’ll stick with what God through nature provides 🌼
I’m with you. All natural and no lab slop.
It feels like I am in a space movie that is how crazy it has gotten.
Of course this is all being done on purpose to shorten the lives of the human being when they get old so pensions won’t have to be paid and probably other reasons also , it’ll bump off one’s who’s use by date comes around . It’s headed to getting the best value out of youth in a workforce then not having to pay for the upkeep when they retire .
Thank you Senator for your inciteful questioning on this proposed dangerous faux food. As a health professional in natural medicine and nutrition, i am disturbed by the ignorance of those who purport to know about what is healthy or not, for the human mictobiome. All the gobblyhmgook speak doesnt make a lab grown food non toxic. We have a problem already in the health of the general population due to proliferation of processed food. I would call this lab grown food, super processed or ultra processed. Thank goodness, the general population will not buy fake food, as evidenced by the section of vegetarian pretend plant protein foods left on shelves during times of threatened food scarcity. Please see if you can stop this fake “meat” , from being labelled “meat”. Thankyou Senator.
Thankyou for following this up.
It is incredibly disturbing (as are other policies, underway at present). In fact, I would go as far as saying that under this government, it seems as if they are trying to transform this society into a dystopian science fiction novel. I used to think comments like this were crazy, but seriously, mix some Orwell here, with Huxley there, add a touch of Asimov, Bradbury, and finally, garnish with Philip K Dick, and you have the big ‘combo’ of these policies coming into fruition. (As far as frankenstein foods go, Asimov was big on this, but of course, he loved AI too). If/ when they pass this frankenstein food, we can then all eat crap, after we’ve been rounded up and put into large cities (so they can use arable land for windfarms and/ or hand back to indigenous “owners”), monitored 24/7 with digital ID, while we watch younger generations receive the opposite of education. All books containing thoughts contrary to current wokeisms will be disposed off, nobody will own anything, and boy, won’t it all just be wonderful.
From online information, Dr Matthew O’Mullane has worked in risk assessment and regulation in several agencies including Office of Chemical Safety, Office of the Australian Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR), Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) which is the Australian Government regulator of agricultural and veterinary (agvet) chemical products, and more recently, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).
Dr O’Mullane’s use of the term, “cell cultured quail product”, in my view, is an escalation of scientific theory. Just as many people have seen through and rejected the gene therapy covid 19 injections, so also products, termed “food”, which have been grown inside a laboratory appartus, will also be seen as unheathly. Australians have learnt to be careful what we put into our bodies.