India joins the list of countries in the running to produce cruelty-free meat with its first laboratory meat project which took off in April this year. With initial funding of Rs 4.5 crore by the Indian Government’s department of biotechnology, scientists will develop mutton and chicken from stem cells, without animal rearing.
The Hyderabad based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has joined with the National Research Centre on Meat (NRCM) to produce ‘ahimsa meat’. The clean meat is nutritionally equivalent and promises to be a convincing replacement to conventional meat, according to CCMB scientists.
During a summit on the future of protein and food technology revolution held in August 2018, Union Minister Maneka Gandhi had advised CCMB to make cell-based ahimsa meat on a commercial scale in the next five years. The Humane Society of India, which is one of the top promoters of synthetic meat, claimed that the government’s investment in the project is the largest compared to any other country
