According to The Wall Street Journal’s article, “Lab-Grown Poultry Clears First Hurdle at FDA”, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared Wednesday that it had “no questions” concerning Upside Food’s lab cultivated chicken.

In a press release , Upside Foods CEO and co-founder Dr. Uma Valeti commented: “This is a watershed moment in the history of food. We started UPSIDE amid a world full of skeptics, and today, we’ve made history again as the first company to receive a ‘No Questions’ letter from the FDA for cultivated meat. This milestone marks a major step towards a new era in meat production, and I’m thrilled that U.S. consumers will soon have the chance to eat delicious meat that’s grown directly from animal cells.”

Upside Foods (IndieBio 02) uses animal cells to grow poultry, meat, and seafood, bypassing the environmental and ethical problems associated with traditional animal farming and slaughter. Upside Foods’ production process uses less water and land than conventionally-produced meat and shrinks the risk for harmful bacteria contamination like salmonella. 

Now that Upside Foods’ first product, cultivated chicken, has cleared the FDA’s premarket review, Upside Foods must receive approval from the US Department of Agriculture before it can go to market in the U.S, the WSJ explained. 

This milestone in Upside Foods’ history follows a string of successes from the company, including a successful $400M series C funding round. Upside Foods also recently acquired cultivated seafood company Cultured Decadence and opened one of the world’s most cutting-edge cultivated meat production facilities called the Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC).