Research: Genetic Drift impact on the Safety of Cell Cultivated Products

The main objective of the FSA’s strategy for 2022-2027 is to ensure that food is safe, is what it says that it is and that it is healthier and more sustainable. With this, our role is to protect consumers from unacceptable risks linked to the consumption of food. Under the regulated products research programme, this includes producing evidence to support thorough, well informed, risk assessments for novel ingredients proposed for the UK market.

Cell cultivated products (CCPs) and alternative proteins produced by biomass or precision fermentation are an emergent food sector around the world. The FSA CCP Sandbox programme is a two-year programme designed to inform regulatory actions that strike the right balance between supporting innovation and ensuring consumers safety. CCPs products claim to have benefits in protein quality, environmental impact, and improved animal welfare implications. This proposed piece of work is attempting to address a key gap in our understanding of the genetic drift of the production cell line occurring during the production of these products, and how producers will be able to effectively demonstrate that they have mitigated any potential hazards. These outputs will then be used to reduce the uncertainties in our future risk assessments and will help facilitate the authorisation of products that we can be confident are safe for use under the proposed uses.

Contract start Date:07/11/2025