The Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation) and the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) have jointly submitted comments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in response to the agency’s Labeling of Foods Comprised of or Containing Cultured Seafood Cells Request for Information. The letter calls on FDA to support a framework that labels these new products descriptively, accurately, and consistently.

Accordingly, the two groups believe that labeling of seafood products produced using cell-cultured technology should include:

• Truthful, clear, and descriptive communication to the consumer about what the product is and how it is produced, in line with FDA’s regulatory requirements
• Potential allergenicity and nutritional content for consumer safety and transparency
• Nondisparaging information about cell-cultured and conventional seafood products
• Differentiation of products from conventionally produced wild or farmed seafood products through a qualifier that modifies the conventional name of the product

Based on peer-reviewed research, NFI and most AMPS Innovation members, including all of the cell-cultured seafood companies, urge FDA to adopt and memorialize the sole use of the term “cell-cultured” to support uniform labeling within the seafood category.

The full text of the letter can be accessed here.

Both FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will work together to ensure the safety and labeling of cell-cultured meat, poultry, and seafood products. In March 2019, FDA and USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) signed a joint framework for the regulation of cell-cultured meat, poultry, and seafood products. 

Among the other provisions of the framework, FSIS will oversee the labeling of cell-cultured meat and poultry, as it does for all meat and poultry sold in the United States, while FDA will manage the labeling of cell-cultured seafood, as it does for most seafood sold in the United States. In a public presentation last summer, the agencies committed to joint principles for product labeling and labeling claims across cell-cultured meat, poultry and seafood products.