Lab-grown chicken debuts in San Francisco restaurant

Chicken made from cultivated cells is officially on the menu at Bar Crenn in San Francisco. But you can't just walk in and order it.

About a week and a half ago, the US Department of Agriculture gave two brands, Upside Foods and Good Meat, approval to start producing and selling their cultivated chicken. Cultivated, or lab-grown, meat is developed from animal cells and grown in massive bioreactors with the help of nutrients like amino acids. This happens in a production facility that looks a lot like a brewery.

On Saturday, cultivated chicken tempura will be on Bar Crenn's menu, served with a burnt chili aioli and garnished with greens and edible flowers. Chef Dominique Crenn took meat off the restaurant's menu in 2018 "because of the impact of factory farming on animals and the planet," according the the restaurant's website, but is comfortable selling cultivated chicken.

Upside Foods held a contest on social media to determine who would be able to try the product at Bar Crenn, and those winners will be able to dig in this weekend. They'll each pay a symbolic $1 to try the chicken. Contest winners also get to tour Upside Food's Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center.

After Saturday, there will be other opportunities to try cultivated chicken at Bar Crenn, but not right away.

According to Upside Foods, there will will be monthly dinner services featuring the product starting later this year. Those who want to try it can sign up ahead of time on the Bar Crenn website.

Good Meat is also planning to first serve its product in a restaurant, though it hasn't revealed a date yet. It's working with chef and restaurateur José Andrés to bring the item to his Washington, DC, restaurant China Chilcano.

The Bar Crenn debut follows a series of approvals granted from the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration, which are together regulating the nascent cultivated meat industry.

In November, the FDA issued a "no questions" letter to Upside Foods, essentially saying that it had no further questions about the safety of the product and so considered it safe for consumption. Good Meat got a similar letter in March. Then, in June, both companies got USDA approval for their labels, which must say "cell-cultivated."

And late last month, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service approved Upside Foods' and Good Meat's applications for a "grant of inspection." Those types of applications "are approved following a rigorous process, which includes assessing a firm's food safety system," according to an FSIS spokesperson. The grants gave both companies the green light to move forward with sales.

Because cell-cultured meat is developed from animal cells, it's not considered vegetarian by Upside Foods or Good Meat.

But it may be appealing to ethical or religious vegetarians, because it can be produced without hurting animals (both companies tout the product as slaughter-free), or to those who are vegetarians for environmental reasons. Cultivated meat at scale could use far less land and water than conventional agriculture, experts say.