A draft UK-EU deal to remove post-Brexit checks on food trade is expected to include temporary exemptions for novel foods and gene-edited plants, which would protect Britain's own work on approving cultivated meat, Green Queen reports. Nothing has been publicly confirmed.
Without an exemption, the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement would push cultivated meat and precision fermentation firms into the EU's novel food process, which can take up to six years. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) had reportedly warned around 600 approval holders and businesses that the deal could void UK authorisations.
Under the reported arrangement, experts say, the UK might follow EU decisions on products Brussels has assessed, and set its own rules for those it has not. Either way, access would cover only the UK market, and firms would still need EU safety clearance to sell in member states.
"If it goes ahead, a temporary novel food exemption would have a significant positive impact on efforts to bring products such as cultivated meat and precision fermentation to the UK market," said Linus Pardoe, senior UK programme manager at the Good Food Institute Europe. He cautioned that it has not been confirmed by the UK government, the European Commission or member states.
Britain began overhauling its framework in 2024 to shorten approval times. The FSA runs a two-year cultivated meat sandbox, due to end in February, and a £1.4 million research programme on fermentation technologies. The uncertainty led some firms to pause UK plans, including BeneMeat, which wrote to Prime Minister Andy Burnham asking that any agreement preserve the UK's ability to judge novel foods on its own evidence.
The FSA is assessing dossiers for human food from Ivy Farm Technologies, Aleph Farms, Mosa Meat, BeneMeat and Parima, whose Gourmey and Vital Meat lines include the furthest-advanced application. Negotiations are due to conclude at the summit on 20 November, after which the agency will update businesses. The new rules are reported to have slipped to the first quarter of 2028.
Reporting by Anay Mridul for Green Queen.
Photo: World Economic Forum / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Source: Green Queen
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