‘Beyond stupid’: Investors slam lab-grown meat restrictions – and billions in livestock subsidies
24 feb. 2026
06:00
Two prominent foodtech investors have hit out at separate parts of EU policy, with one criticising the bloc’s ‘legacy’ livestock subsidy system and another slamming a parliamentary move to ban lab-grown products from being called ‘meat’.
“It’s beyond stupid,” Felix Leonhardt, managing partner at Oyster Bay Venture Capital, tells Impact Loop.
“It’s beyond stupid,” Felix Leonhardt, managing partner at Oyster Bay Venture Capital, tells Impact Loop.
Last week, Euractiv reported that EU lawmakers were exploring a legal way to block lab-grown meat companies from calling their products “meaty” labels such as “sausage” or “burger.”
If successful, the move would follow an EU proposal, approved in October, to ban such labels on plant-based products. The ban, first put forward by French conservative MEP Céline Imart in July, argues that consumers might be misled or confused by names that evoke meat when the product contains no animal components.