Call to Increase Development and Regulation of Artificial Meat in China

During last week's Two Sessions, China's annual parliament meeting there has been a lot of attention for the development and regulation of the increasingly popular artificial meat. Experts called for more regulation, investments and widespread consumer popularization.

This year, many giants such as KFC, McDonald's, Nestle, and Starbucks started experimenting with artificial meat on the Chinese market. And they have good reason to do so. According to Kearney Global Management, the global market share of artificial meat will reach up to 60% of meat consumption in 2040. And in a recent report from the China Business Industry Research Institute it is estimated that within 2 years, the global market size will grow from 5 billion dollars in 2020, to exceed 6 billion dollars in 2022. 

Artificial Meat

According to Sun Baoguo, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and academia of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, China's cell-culture meat is comparatively underdeveloped compared to European and American countries. In addition, nutrition and flavor demands are more diverse than most foreign countries. All of this requires a lot of independent innovation that adapts to the Chinese market. To accelerate the research and industrialization of artificial meat in China, Sun Baoguo proposes to increase R&D investment, carry out public education to increase consumer awareness, and create product acceptance, and at last, China must optimize the supervision and regulation mechanism for artificial (cell-culture) meat.

As for now, the national standard for artificial meat has been included in the legislation program. It is expected that the primary standard for plant-based meat will be carried out within 2-3 years, and the product standards for plant-based minced meat, meatballs, and sausage will be included in the future according to Qiao Xiaoling, chief engineer of China meat product comprehensive research center. 

During the two sessions, Sun Baoguo also proposed that cell-culture meat should be classified as new food raw material and supervised according to “Administrative Measures of The Safety Review on New Food Raw Materials." No decision yet has been made to this regard. 

All the information in the article is derived from articles from the Beijing Paper (Chinese only),  National Food Quality Supervision and Inspection Centre (Chinese only), and Chemlinked.