Italy will again try to ban the production of synthetic foodstuffs such as cultured meat and artificial laboratory burgers.
Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida said this at a party conference of the European Conservative ECR faction. Rome had to withdraw a previously proposed ban by order of the European Commission because such a ban is 'market disruptive'.
Conservative Italian politicians say European farmers, breeders and fishermen risk paying a high price for the ideological errors behind the European Union's Green Deal. According to Italy, emissions reduction targets will only lead to a decline in food production.” Agricultural organizations in Austria and Switzerland have also recently spoken out against the arrival of counterfeit meat.
This summer, the first application for approval of artificially produced imitation meat was submitted in non-EU country Switzerland. The review process is still ongoing. It is probably only a matter of time before laboratory meat hits the market in Switzerland and later in the EU, even though there is currently no approval process in the EU.
Austrian LNV Minister Georg Strasser advocates that synthetic food should have its own label so that the customer knows that it is not a 'natural' food product. “We demand a fact-based dialogue with society and are against equating the natural products of our farmers with artificially produced food,” Strasser emphasizes. Consumers must be able to recognize what they are buying.
Laboratory meat would be a competitor for domestic meat production. 641,000 cattle are slaughtered in Austria every year. Half of the agricultural land there consists of grassland. A large part of the grain is used as animal feed.
According to the UN, by 2050 there will be approximately 10 billion people on earth whose food supply will need to be assured. Major companies see artificially produced imitation meat as a future solution for food security, climate protection and animal welfare.