Cultured Meat: Of Regulations, Trademarks and Transformative Biotechnologies

Beef without cows is now a reality, with current estimations forecasting cultured meat to be available for sale directly to consumers as early as 2021. Legislation on product labelling is increasingly adopted across jurisdictions to protect the trillion-dollar market of livestock-based meat, while continuous shifting in consumer preferences and market demands in favour of sustainable products call for legal predictability in view of technological innovations. While regulatory frameworks are currently being adapted to accommodate the peculiarities of cultured meat products, little attention is being paid to trademark rights as a possible means to advance the naming battles of what actually constitutes meat. We will use narrations as a lens to explore some of the legal issues that cultured meat is bringing to the regulatory regime. Promoted as an environmentally more sustainable alternative to farmed meat, research into cultured meat has gained new urgency in response to the climate catastrophe. Nonetheless, the regulatory push back from established market players, in particular the conventional farming industry, is already noticeable. Our analysis will thus focus on the question of trademarks for cultured meat. We will show that this question raises some of the deeper philosophical is-sues, and how the new food will call itself, or be allowed to call itself, will have significant impact on its market acceptance. Cultural and anthropological practices around meat and its consumption add another layer of difficulty, especially for international legal regimes.