FDA declares lab-grown chicken safe to eat but consumers, is it really?

BY MICHAEL THOMAS

The U.S. government, namely the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently given the green light to an artificial meat manufacturing company named “Upside Foods” to introduce and feed the public with lab-grown synthetic chicken.

The FDA described the process with these words, Upside Foods “Will use animal cell culture technology to take living cells from chickens and grow the cells in a controlled environment to make the cultured animal cell food.”

Even though the FDA‘s approval is significant, the product is not yet approved to be sold on the market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Food Safety and Inspection Service still must approve Upside Foods before this process is fully completed.

In this article, it is important to look at who Upside Foods is, what exactly their intentions are and who the players behind this group are.

Upside Foods is already bragging on their website even though the full approval has not been granted, here is a quote from them.

“This landmark regulatory decision means the FDA accepts our safety conclusion, and Upside’s cultivated chicken will be available following USDA inspection and label approval.”

Who is Upside? A California-based food-tech firm with huge plans to feed humanity with artificial meat products all in the name of saving the environment and climate change.

Speaking of change, in 2019, it was revealed that Memphis Meats — the former name of Upside Foods before a 2021 rebrand was employing CRISPR as part of its process for curating lab-grown meat, and even received a patent for this purpose.

Here are some of the methods that Upside will employ in the production of such meats.

This company claims that cultivating lab-grown meat will save animals, not considering that the bovine serum used as part of this process requires that animals be slaughtered.

It is now easy to see why Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the Center for Food Safety, questioned the FDA’s “pre-market consultation.

The Center for Food Safety questioned the FDA’s regulatory process, and called this “experimental product” “woefully deficient.”

“The FDA, in this case, seemed to mostly review what the company sent them, but did not require additional tests and did not require the company to disclose its methods in a complete and transparent manner,” Hanson said.

The Center for Food Safety expressed its disappointment in the FDA’s statement which said, it has ‘no further questions about this experimental product’s safety, and thinks that the public deserves much better from the FDA.

Upside notes that it uses genetic engineering to keep the cells growing, however, it does not share which genes are being used. This is crucial information that consumers and policymakers need to know to make informed decisions in the best interests of public health.

Hanson also has concerns about the use of genetically engineered cells as part of the production process, revealing that such cells “can promote cancers”

Now that who Upside is, and what they are about is clear; it is time to look carefully at the investors and backers behind this plan to feed humanity “make-believe meat.”

The list goes like this: Cargill, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Kimbal Musk (brother of Elon Musk) are some of the players who were brought on board in 2017 as investors.

Anyone who understands what Bill Gates is about will not be surprised that now he is bought into the gene-editing sector as well.

According to Upside Foods, other investors in the company include: Tyson Foods, the world’s largest poultry producer, Whole Foods, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, and Amazon and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.

Gates, Branson, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and Kimbal Musk invested in Upside during its Series B funding round in 2020. This is a project, which raised $161 million.

It is especially important to note that Kimbal Musk was named 2017 Social Entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation, a sister organization to the World Economic Forum.

The WEF has repeatedly praised lab-grown meat, claiming it “Can help end hunger.”

In closing, no one can deny that Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are in the business of depopulation, therefore, the rest of us, especially if we eat chicken, beef, or seafood, must do our homework, and know where, and from whom our food supply comes.