STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Is lab-grown meat being sold in Aldi stores as of April 2024? No, that's not true: Aldi told Lead Stories that the grocery store chain does not sell cultivated meat products. Cultivated meat products are deemed safe for consumption by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The government agency also told Lead Stories that only two companies were approved to sell lab-grown meat products, neither of which had its products available in U.S. grocery stores as of this writing.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on March 28, 2024 (archived here). The caption read:
Good morning everyone I just want to make everyone aware that lab grown meat is now in our markets please be careful because this looks absolutely disgusting . There was no blood in the pack of chicken and also weird silver/ white tubes inside the meat of this pack of drumsticks I purchased from Aldi , if it's lab grown it will have a stamp saying it was approved and Inspected by us department of agriculture , it can also say cultivated , as to my knowledge there only doing this with chicken and pork so far .... It was beyond slimy and stringy and just so gross .this can't be meat also the bone had no bone marrow.... #fakemeat #cultivatedmeat #labgrownmeat
Here is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Wed April 3 17:04:35 UTC 2024)
Other iterations of the above claim on social media said that in addition to cultivated "chicken and pork" products, Aldi was also selling "lab-grown bacon." Neither of these claims are true.
Aldi responded to an inquiry from Lead Stories, saying that as of April 3, 2024, it does not carry lab-grown meat products. The company wrote in an email received on April 3, 2024:
At ALDI, we pride ourselves on sourcing a range of fresh meat products at affordable prices for our customers. We do not sell any meat products from cultivated lab methods.
Aldi is an international discount supermarket chain with more than 2,300 stores located in 38 states, according to its website (archived here). As the digital media company The Dispatch first reported on April 2, 2024 (archived here), lab-grown meat is unavailable for purchase in U.S. grocery stores as of this writing -- Aldi or otherwise.
Cell-cultured meat is developed in a lab and grown from a sample of animal cells. According to a 2023 report (archived here), it is created through a five-step process:
(1) taking a biopsy of animal cells, (2) cell banking, (3) cell growth, (4) harvesting, and (5) food processing.
In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced a formal agreement (archived here) to jointly oversee human food produced from animal cell technology. Under this agreement (archived here), FSIS is responsible (archived here) for inspecting and verifying "activities in establishments that harvest or process cell-cultured meat or poultry food products for human food."
As Lead Stories reported in July 2023, meat cultivated from animal cells is subject to the same statutory requirements and regulations as conventionally grown meat, poultry and seafood derived from slaughter.
In 2022, the FDA provided premarket review and approval for two companies, GOOD Meat (archived here) and UPSIDE Foods (archived here), to sell cell-cultivated chicken in U.S. markets, Lead Stories reported in November 2023.
In June 2023, FSIS issued the first grants of inspection to the two companies to produce cell-cultivated chicken in their facilities and to label their products as "cell-cultivated chicken," according to the FDA's human food made with cultured cells inventory (archived here). An FSIS spokesperson confirmed in a phone interview on April 3, 2024, that these two companies were the only ones currently approved in the U.S. to sell lab-grown meat.
UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat sold the first cell-cultured chicken to restaurants in July 2023 in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. In an email to Lead Stories on April 4, 2024, UPSIDE Foods confirmed that the company "does not sell our cultivated meat products to Aldi." As well, GOOD Meat confirmed to Lead Stories in an email received on April 6, 2024, that the company's "products are not available at any restaurants or grocery stores in the U.S. currently."
Lead Stories also contacted the Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation, a not-for-profit association representing cell-cultivating food companies, for further information regarding where products are sold. We will update this article accordingly.
Updates:
-
2024-04-08T20:43:36Z 2024-04-08T20:43:36Z Adds response from GOOD Meat.
