CLAIM: Bacon sold by Aldi grocery stores under its brand Appleton Meats does not come from pigs and is instead grown from cells in a lab.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Aldi told The Associated Press that products sold through its store brand — Appleton Farms — “are not produced through cultivated lab practices.” A Canadian company named Appleton Meats, which is not affiliated with Appleton Farms, was founded in 2017 with the goal of producing lab-grown meat, according to local news reports.
THE FACTS: Social media users are circulating false claims about Aldi’s store brand bacon, confusing it with a cellular agriculture company that has a similar name. Many shared identical text, along with a picture of the chain’s Appleton Farms premium sliced bacon sitting in a grocery cart.
“Aldi’s customers: If you shop at Aldi you need to know that store brand bacon is not from pig it’s from a growing CELL,” the text reads.
The rest of the text is an overview of Appleton Meats taken from the Golden Research Engine, an online database of technology companies, where it is described as “a privately funded company exploring multiple cellular agricultural methods for growing ground beef, chicken, and mouse-meat cat treats.”
But Aldi’s store brand is called Appleton Farms, not Appleton Meats, and its bacon is not grown in a lab.
“Our Appleton Farms products are not produced through cultivated lab practices,” Aldi told the AP.
Appleton Meats is a Canadian company founded in 2017, according to local news reports. Aldi confirmed to the AP that it has no affiliation with Appleton Meats.
It is unclear whether Appleton Meats is still in operation, but its founder Sid Deen told The Canadian Press news agency in 2019 that the company was conducting initial research on how to best grow meat from cells. He anticipated that Appleton Meats would have a product to sell within three to five years.
Deen’s LinkedIn profile describes Appleton Meats as “a cultivated meat company currently in research and development” that hopes “to produce meat which can be obtained without harvesting animals.” Deen did not respond to an inquiry from the AP.
Lab-grown meat — also known as cultivated meat, cultured meat or cell-based meat — is created using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. When ready, the meat is then formed into shapes such as cutlets, sausages or nuggets.
The Agriculture Department gave the companies Good Meat and Upside Foods the go-ahead last summer to sell lab-grown chicken in the U.S. This move came months after the FDA deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat.
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This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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