India and South Korea have begun actively establishing regulatory frameworks for the approval of cultivated meat and seafood.
According to a report from The Economic Times, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is currently reviewing countries that have previously approved cultivated meat as a first step in establishing their own regulatory framework.
At the same time, India’s Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute has been working to produce cultivated fish, and the Department of Biotechnology is also funding cultivated meat research.
In a 2023 interview with Techgraph, Sneha Singh, Managing Director of the Good Food Institute India (GFI India), described the country as poised to become a supplier of cultivated media ingredients such as growth factors, recombinant proteins, fats, and edible scaffolds for cultivated meat production.
Local startups in the cultivated meat and seafood space include Myoworks, NeatMeatt (which is working in the government’s cultivated fish project), Klevermeat, and Clear Meat.
South Korea opens application process for cultivated meat
Like India, South Korea is working to implement cultivated food regulations as well as a framework to provide companies with guidelines. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (KFDA) recently announced that it has opened an application process for the approval of cultivated meat, as reported by local media.
The announcement came after the KFDA revised and published the “Temporary Standards and Standards for Food Products,” stipulating the procedure for approving raw materials “made using technology,” such as cell and microbial cultures.
According to GFI APAC, cultivated food ingredients were previously only allowed for R&D purposes, but now have an opportunity to be approved for sale for the first time.
GFI said the assessment fee for cultivated ingredients in South Korea is 45 million won ($34,000 USD) and the approval process is estimated to last up to 270 working days. GFI says the ministry has not yet received any dossiers at this time.
As a sign of movement in the local market, South Korea-based Simple Planet – a producer of high-concentrate cultivated meat powder – recently raised $6 million in a pre-series A round, some of which will be used to build a facility for mass production of its products.
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