Eating Lab Grown Chicken Equivalent to Eating Cancer Tumors?
This past November we reported how a new lab-grown chicken product is being developed and could soon be available commercially. The company, Upside Foods, is run by a medical doctor, and they put out a press release last year claiming that the FDA had "cleared" the product. But that was simply a clever marketing campaign, as the FDA does not approve foods, like they do drugs. Unlike other lab-produced meats which are vegetarian and plant based, this product uses cell lines from chickens. Bloomberg did an investigative report on this product this week, and reported that these cell lines are "immortalized" and are basically the same as cancerous tumors. They reported: "Thank the biotech revolution. Under the right conditions, animal cells can be grown in a petri dish, or even at scale in factories full of stainless-steel drums. For decades, companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson have cultured large volumes of cells to produce vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other biotherapeutics. Now the idea is that we might as well eat these cells, too."
