What about regulation?

When companies produce a brand-new product, like lab-grown meat or milk brewed like beer, all kinds of issues around regulation pop up, says Joseph Puglisi, professor of structural biology at Stanford University and a member of Beyond Meat’s scientific advisory board.

“The technology has galloped far ahead of the FDA,” said Puglisi, while speaking at the Future Food Tech conference in Burlingame in March. “What are they going to do with cultured meat? Will it be covered by the FDA or USDA?”

The traditional setup is already confusing enough. The U.S. Department of Agriculture inspects facilities that produce meat, poultry and eggs, including slaughterhouses, meat processors and egg farms. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for inspecting dairy farms and all other food processors.

Will lab-based meat, which won’t have contact with certain riskier aspects of agriculture, such as cow manure, be under the same inspection standards as regular meat?

The situation is a little more cut-and-dried with the product Perfect Day Foods is making — a vegan milk made with yeast-fermented cow milk proteins — which will likely be regulated by the FDA. There is one stumbling block, though: The FDA’s definition of milk involves “the lacteal secretion” of “healthy cows,” which the product has nothing to do with.

But Perfect Day co-founder and CEO Ryan Pandya was reassured after speaking with someone at the FDA recently.

“They’ve told us their job is to make sure consumers are safe and not misled, and to encourage innovation of companies, and they want to do both,” he says.

Pandya is not even sure what word the company will use for its faux dairy product yet. Milk doesn’t seem quite right, and he doesn’t want to use the term “beverage.” However, he is open to suggestions.