Cultured Meat Safety Initiative Opens Survey on Scaffold Materials as Regulatory Gap Widens

The Cultured Meat Safety Initiative (CMSI) has opened a survey to gather data on scaffold and microcarrier materials used in cellular agriculture to establish a harmonized system for classifying and safety-testing these inputs. The distinction between scaffolds that remain in the final product and those removed during harvesting is crucial for safety review, as materials that consumers eat face different scrutiny than those filtered out in manufacturing. Currently, there is no regulatory framework to evaluate many of these materials, leaving companies without a clear route to demonstrate safety and potentially impacting approval timelines.

The CMSI, in collaboration with New Harvest and Vireo Advisors, aims to close this regulatory gap by defining classifications for scaffolds and microcarriers, identifying quality and regulatory requirements, and developing methods to assess digestibility and residual presence. Building on the success of its Safety-Assessed Media Ingredient (SAMI) framework, the initiative seeks to create harmonized protocols to streamline the safety assessment of materials used in cultivated meat production. The survey is open to developers, researchers, and scaffold specialists, with results being summarized rather than attributed to individual respondents, and the deadline for responses is September 4th.