The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) launched a joint webinar to give interested stakeholders an overview of FDA’s and USDA’s roles and responsibilities for cultured animal cell human and animal food products. The webinar provides information on FDA and USDA’s respective statutory authorities, roles and responsibilities for cultured animal cell food products, and regulatory points of contact for new food production technology. Interested stakeholders must register to view the joint webinar; the webinar will be available immediately after registration is completed. 

Background:

Taking a small number of cells from living animals and growing them in a controlled environment to create food is an emerging area of food science. Advancements in cell culture technology are enabling food developers to use animal cells obtained from livestock, poultry, or seafood in the production of food, with these products expected to be ready for the market in the not too distant future.

The FDA’s role, along with USDA-FSIS, is to ensure that regulatory oversight is in place so that, when that happens, food developers bring safe and properly labeled products to the market. In 2019, the FDA and USDA-FSIS established a formal agreement on how we would use our regulatory tools to help ensure that foods comprising or containing cultured animal cells entering the U.S. market are safe and properly labeled. This agreement laid out which parts of the process each agency will oversee and was the first step toward developing the framework to support safe production of these foods and providing clarity to industry on the requirements for producing, distributing, and selling these foods in the U.S.

Registration Information

Speakers:

• Jeremiah Fasano, Ph.D., Senior Policy Advisor, Division of Science and Technology, Office of Food Additive Safety, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FDA
• Matthew Michael, Director, Regulations Development Staff, Office of Policy and Program Development, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA
• Ciro Ruiz-Feria, Ph.D., Animal Scientist, Division of Animal Feeds, Office of Surveillance and Compliance, Center for Veterinary Medicine, FDA

Additional Information:

• Food Made with Cultured Animal Cells
• USDA and FDA Announce a Formal Agreement to Regulate Cell-Cultured Food Products from Cell Lines of Livestock and Poultry. (March 07, 2019)

Questions:

• For questions on the use of cultured animal cells for human food products, contact the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Office of Food Additive Safety at [email protected]. 
• For questions on the use of cultured animals cells for animal food products, contact the Center of Veterinary Medicine, Division of Animal Feeds, at [email protected].
• For webinar application related questions, please contact Michael Kawczynski at [email protected].