UK Government Pumps £1.6M, Opens New Regulatory Office in Milestone Move for Cultivated Meat

The UK government has awarded £1.6M to the Food Standards Agency to create a ‘sandbox’ to fast-track cultivated meat approval, alongside a new regulatory office.

Nearly five years after breaking away from the EU, the UK is rapidly stepping up its efforts to bring cultivated meat on British plates.

Today, it has awarded £1.6M to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to create a first-of-its-kind regulatory ‘sandbox’ for cultivated meat producers. The idea is to “support innovation through safety” by speeding up the timeline and lowering the costs related to regulatory clearance.

Sandboxes comprise controlled environments for situations where scientific and technological innovation has outpaced existing regulation – a lot of companies are currently making cultivated meat, but the UK’s authorisation process is slow and congested. These sandboxes run for a limited period to help startups, researchers and regulators work together to develop new rules, standards and guidance.

The investment for the Cell-Cultivated Products Regulatory Sandbox is part of the first round of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Engineering Biology Sandbox Fund.

In addition to the financing, the FSA said it is pressing ahead with plans to set up a system of international cooperation, which would see the UK greenlight cultivated meat products that have been approved by other countries.

In a parallel effort, the government has also created a Regulatory Innovation Office to reduce the burden of red tape and accelerate public access to new technologies. It will work together with the Department for Transport, the Department for Health and Social Care, and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

Robert E. Jones, president of trade association Cellular Agriculture Europe, said the move signposted the UK’s aim to be an innovation leader by “boosting its global competitiveness in the race to address food security and sustainability issues in our food systems”.

“The UK has the potential to be at the front of the pack in Europe’s projected £70B cultivated meat market, but only if investors know we are open for business,” added Jeremy Coller, president of the Alternative Proteins Association. “The creation of this sandbox is a fantastic step forward for growing British businesses.”

Cultivated meat sandbox will lower costs and approval timeline

Plans to create a sandbox were first announced by the FSA in February, after a 2023 report it commissioned found that speeding up novel foods regulation could help the UK meet its carbon reduction plans. The regulator said it was in talks with food companies and had issued a call for scientists to work alongside the testing project.

Alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe last month called on ministers to approve the FSA’s bid for funding to ensure the agency “can accelerate its understanding of the food safety aspects of cultivated meat”.

Regulatory sandboxes allow companies to test new concepts with real customers under the supervision of a regulator, as designed by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. The cultivated meat sandbox, a first for Europe, would provide pre-application support to startups, expand the safety and nutritional knowledge of novel foods, and reduce approval timelines, all while maintaining safety standards.

Due to launch in February, the sandbox will be jointly run by the FSA and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) over a two-year period, which will collect “rigorous scientific evidence” about the technology behind cultivated meat. The aim is to better guide companies on making products in a safe way, and demonstrating that they are, indeed, safe.

The regulatory bodies will address some of the key questions that need tackling – such as labelling – before cultivated meat hits the market. All this would enable the FSA and FSS to “keep pace with emerging technologies” and apply new, up-to-date insights when clearing novel foods for sale.

The sandbox programme aims to shrink the costs associated with regulatory applications – currently standing at £350,000-£500,000 per product – and help cultivated meat startups attract the investment required to scale up their manufacturing capacity.

So far, five companies have applied for regulatory approval in the UK. London-based Meatly, which targets pet food, is the only one to have received the go-ahead. Israel’s Aleph Farms (whose cultivated beef is already approved in its home country), French startups Vital Meat (cultivated chicken) and Gourmey (cultivated foie gras), and British player Ivy Farm Technologies (cultivated beef) are all waiting in the wings.

Now, the FSA expects at least 15 more applications in the next two years, and predicts that many more startups could crop up thanks to the development.

UK expands efforts to advance cultivated meat

The announcement accompanied the FSA’s confirmation that it will establish a framework for international cooperation for novel food approvals, which was first suggested in May. This would enable the UK to authorise products based on their approvals in other countries like Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

These plans are yet to be backed by Keir Starmer’s Labour administration. But the FSA is planning to use some of the funds to set up an international regulatory network that would help set up such a system.

Cultivated meat is also on the radar of the new Regulatory Innovation Office, whose engineering biology focus involves helping regulators bring these products to market faster. “By speeding up approvals, providing regulatory certainty and reducing unnecessary delays, we’re curbing the burden of red tape so businesses and our public services can innovate and grow, which means more jobs, a stronger economy, and a better quality of life for people across the UK,” said science and tech secretary Peter Kyle.

“Ensuring consumers can trust the safety of new foods is one of our most crucial responsibilities,” said Prof Robin May, chief scientific advisor to the FSA. “The CCP sandbox programme will enable safe innovation and allow us to keep pace with new technologies being used by the food industry to ultimately provide consumers with a wider choice of safe foods.”

These developments are part of a larger effort by the UK to “modernise” its regulatory framework. In 2025, the FSA is rolling out reforms to the process, which include the creation of a new public register to replace the existing system of requiring a statutory instrument, and removing the need for renewals of approvals every 10 years.

The statutory instrument adds up to six months to a process that already takes over two-and-a-half years, and the renewal requirements add to the FSA’s already crowded backlog – around 22% of its 450-strong caseload are renewal applications, and it expects a further 300 in the next two years as approvals expire.

“New UK government ministers have confirmed they are content to proceed with our two initial market authorisation reform proposals to remove renewal requirements for authorised regulated products and allow authorisations to come into effect following ministerial decisions,” the FSA said last month. “We are now prioritising delivery of this work.”

Further demonstrating its commitment to the cause, the UK government also poured in £15M towards a National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC), taking its total investment in the category above £91M. NAPIC involves multiple universities, farmers, regulators, and plant-based, cultivated meat and fermentation startups, alongside international partners like the UN.