Italy is poised to ban the use of vertebrate animal cell cultures in growing synthetic food, whether for human consumption or as feed for farm animals.
A bill prohibiting this practice has been issued by the government and is now awaiting parliamentary approval.
Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, a member of the Fratelli D’Italia party, justified the bill on the basis that laboratory grown food reduces the quality of the end-product and hurts traditional producers.
The use of laboratory grown food is associated with multinational companies, whose incursions into the Italian food market are resented by the country’s present government. Indeed, Meloni’s administration has renamed the Ministry for Agriculture as the Ministry for Agriculture and Food Sovereignty.
It remains to be seen whether the bill will indeed come into force and whether other countries will join in restricting this nascent practice.
