Meat, dairy and sugar grown in a lab could be on sale in the UK for human consumption for the first time within two years.

The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) is looking at how it can speed up the approval process for lab-grown foods, the Norwegian Document news portal reports, citing the BBC. UK firms have led the way in the field scientifically but feel they have been held back by the current regulations. Dog food made from meat that was grown in factory vats went on sale in the UK for the first time last month.

In 2020, Singapore became the first country to permit the sale of cell-cultured meat for human consumption, followed by the United States three years later and Israel last year. However, Italy and the US states of Alabama and Florida have imposed bans.

Lab-grown foods are grown into plant or animal tissue from tiny cells. The cells are grown in fermentation tanks and then processed to look like food. This can sometimes involve gene editing to tweak the food’s properties.

The claimed benefits are that they are better for the environment and potentially healthier. However, Pat Thomas, director of the campaign group Beyond GM, says that these high-tech foods may not be as environmentally friendly as they are made out to be as it takes energy to make them and that in some cases their health benefits are being oversold.

„Lab-grown foods are ultimately ultra-processed foods and we are in an era where we are trying to get people to eat fewer ultra-processed foods because they have health implications,”

said Pat Thomas, pointing out that it is worth saying that these ultra-processed foods have not been in the human diet before.