The Dutch government has partnered with the cultivated meat industry to develop a code of practice for the facilitation of taste tests for cell-cultured meat and seafood products prior to receiving market approval. It is expected that taste tests for such foods will soon be allowed in controlled environments and under limited conditions in the Netherlands.

To develop the code of practice, the Dutch government collaborated with cultivated meat producers Meatable and Mosa Meat, as well as sector representative HollandBIO.

The historic agreement makes the Netherlands the first country in the EU to make preapproval tastings of food grown from animal cells possible, even preceding an EU novel food approval. The effort is part of the Netherland’s National Growth Fund, which committed €60 million to build a robust cellular agriculture ecosystem and make the country a global hub for the emerging technology. The organization created to implement the National Growth Fund plan, Cellular Agriculture Netherlands, will have responsibility for implementing the code of practice, including hiring a panel of experts to evaluate requests by companies to conduct tastings of cultivated meat and seafood.

The code of practice was created after an intervention by the Dutch House of Representatives in 2022, specifically, a motion requesting that the government enter into consultations with Dutch cellular agriculture producers to enable preapproval tastings under controlled and safe conditions. The motion was passed by 14 of 17 voting political parties.