Financial Times: How to make lab-grown meat halal

Meat grown in a lab could be considered halal, according to advice from Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia to a U.S. food start-up, as the industry starts to explore certification for products to fit religious dietary rules.

San Francisco-based Eat Just asked three Sharia law scholars to examine whether cultivated meat can be halal. The scholars concluded it could, provided any stem cells used to make it were taken from halal sources, among other stipulations.

While the industry is a long way from reaching commercial scale, U.S. and Singapore regulators have given the green light to a handful of lab-grown meat start-ups, and companies have been looking to test whether their products could be appropriate for the billions of consumers who eat a halal or kosher diet.

The process is far from simple because religious dietary certification varies from country to country and religious authorities across jurisdictions may have differing opinions.