June 3, 2019 — Those who remember the introduction of surimi to the U.S. in the early 1980s might still recall a fight that rose to the federal level involving what it would officially be named.

“Sea Legs,” “King Krab,” “Crab Shapes,” and “crab sticks” were all put forward as options. Eventually, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required – but did not have the manpower to enforce – the term “imitation crab.” Finally, it agreed in 2006 to the long-winded “Crab-flavored seafood, made with surimi, a fully cooked fish protein.”

Previously, the U.S. government oversaw a protracted fight by the dairy industry against “oleomargarine.” The fight involved questions over classification of the product for tax purposes and a mishmash of state laws, some of which included a requirement to sell margarine in its original pale grey color – the yellow dye to be physically mixed in by the consumer – to avoid deception.

Now the scene is playing out for cell-based meats, if that is what they will finally be called.

“Cell-based meat,” “cell-cultured meat,” or “lab-grown meat,” are all terms referring to artificially cultured muscle or organ cells of animals. The Good Food Institute (GFI), which lobbies for and promotes the plant-based meat analog and cell-based meat industries, promotes the term “clean meat.”

“Rather than obtaining meat from animals raised on environmentally destructive factory farms and slaughtered in filthy slaughterhouses, clean meat is produced by taking a small sample of animal cells and replicating them in a culture outside of the animal. The resulting product is 100 percent real meat, but without the antibiotics, E. coli, salmonella, or waste contamination – all of which come standard in conventional meat production,” the organization explains on its website.

Read the full story at Seafood Source