Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 7/16/18

Cell-cultured meat officially arrived on Washington's radar last week, but there's another non-regulatory tiff to keep an eye on: The raging fight over what on earth to call it.

The debate over how to refer to this new class of products is altogether separate from the debate regulators will ultimately have about how the products are to be labeled — something that likely won't be settled for a long time, as FDA and USDA are still jockeying for jurisdiction, and the products are not yet ready for market. But how these products are referred to colloquially is a question that will no doubt matter for consumer acceptance.

Little agreement: For all the buzz over the nascent Silicon-Valley-fueled sector, there's surprisingly little consensus about what to call the products, which take the cells of food animals and grow them into tissues that can replicate meat products from sausages to spicy tuna rolls.

No name buzz: The lack of terminology sparked a healthy dose of press coverage in the wake of FDA's public meeting on the sector last week. Some cheerleaders of the technology, many of whom are vegan and want to see the end of animal agriculture, prefer the term clean meat (an absolute no-go for the meat industry and food regulatory nerds alike). Others like calling it cultured meat, or cell-cultured meat, though neither term resonated with consumers. Lab-grown is popular in the media, in part because it's easy to understand, but some in the industry hate the term. Cell-based, in vitro, craft, synthetic, imitation and fake are also tossed around.

How it played: The war of words is seeping into mainstream, national coverage: The Atlantic called it a "farcical battle," while Slate published a deep dive into the politics of the labeling fight (both outlets, it should be noted, used "lab-grown" in their headlines). Other media outlets are using multiple terms (as are we). FoodNavigator, for example, ran a story on the meeting with a headline referring to it as cell-cultured meat, aka clean meat.

Aggies try to block 'clean meat': The agriculture industry certainly seems attuned to the massive potential underlying the terminology question. The Associated Press revealed last month that the former head of the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, Randy Krotz, last fall had looked into how to potentially stop the term "clean meat" in its tracks by investigating it "from a trademark perspective," according to emails. Krotz learned that someone else had already applied for the trademark, but claimed the group was able to land the @clean_meat Twitter handle.

More to come: You can expect to hear a lot more about this debate in the months and years to come, particularly as both sides of the issue conduct more market research with an eye to how crucial framing and terminology will be for the sector's success or failure.