On May 5 and 6, Georgian and Russian-speaking Facebook users shared an English-language video claiming that lab-grown meat, referred to as “meat imitation,” is being sold in stores. In the video, packaged meat cuts are labeled with the word “mock” (meaning fake or imitation).
The meat shown in the video is not lab-created “meat imitation.” Mock tender refers to a cut of beef taken from the shoulder and does not mean that the meat is artificially produced.
In the video, several packaged meat cuts on display are labeled “mock tender.”
One of the definitions of the word mock is “fake” or “imitation,” which likely led the person in the video to claim that the meat was artificially produced. However, in the context of beef, mock tender refers to a cut taken from a shoulder blade area of a cow. The shoulder blade of a cow is also referred to as “chuck” or “shoulder.” Therefore, the label Mock Tender Steak on the meat in the video simply means a steak cut from the shoulder of a cow.
An illustration from the culinary magazine The Spruce Eats shows the specific part of the cow from which the “mock tender” cut is taken.
It is worth noting that in 2023, two companies in the U.S., UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to produce lab-cultivated meat. This type of meat is grown in a lab from animal cells and is referred to as cell-cultivated meat. In 2023, UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat sold cell-cultivated chicken meat in restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Notably, the FDA and USDA jointly oversee the production of these products and ensure that consumers are properly informed that the meat is cell-cultivated. Dishes made from this type of chicken meat were available only in a few restaurants and are not broadly available on the market. According to GOOD Meat, the company’s cultivated chicken meat will soon be available in Singapore in the meat retail chain Huber’s Butchery. It is also important to note that these companies only sell cultivated chicken meat, and as of now, cultivated beef is not available on the market.
About the source:
The Facebook account Maia Tvaltvadze regularly spreads anti-vaccine disinformation, various conspiracy theories, and fake news with anti-Western content. Disinformation shared by her has been fact-checked multiple times in the past by Myth Detector.
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