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Kennedy says HHS will closely monitor lab-grown protein products

Federal lawmakers are asking the Food and Drug Administration to provide more oversight of lab-grown protein products.

During a hearing on Tuesday, South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds gave an example of a lab-grown product he says is posing as meat. “One example of these experiments takes pork fat cells grown in a lab and combines them with plant protein. This product is sold to consumers at the grocery store as a meatball.”

Rounds called it an “ultra-processed lab-grown fake meat product” and asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. about monitoring the products.  Kennedy says he shares the Senator’s concern.  “I probably have an amplified concern, and we’re going to do, we’re going to exercise FDA’s oversight over them. There going to have to show us. They’re going to have to get through a lot of skepticism to show that they’re safe.”

Rounds and Kennedy commented during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on Tuesday at the Capitol.