Clean meat programme gets Central govt funding

The Central government has decided to fund the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) here and the National Research Centre on Meat for research on cell-based meat. "Now, the government has decided to support this clean meat programme through a project. It's a short-term project.

It will be implemented jointly by CCMB and NRC which is an ICAR institute," CCMB director Rakesh Mishra told reporters here Thursday. He thanked the department of biotechnology for the funding of about Rs 4.50 crore.

The amount is major funding ever by the government in the cell-based meat field, officials said. Cell-based meat, also called clean meat or cultured meat, is nutritionally equivalent to conventional animal meat, and tastes, smells, looks and feels exactly the same, a press release said.

Its only difference lies in the method of production, the release said. Rather than raising and slaughtering animals for meat, cell-based meat is produced through 'cellular agriculture' wherein cells are sourced from an animal and cultivated into the meat, it said.

In 2018, the Atal Incubation Centre at CCMB partnered with Humane Society International/India (HSI/India), one of the largest animal protection organisations in the country, to promote and develop the clean meat sector. It has also been working with the Good Food Institute, which advances research and commercialisation of the plant-based and clean meat sector, the release said.