Your Next Chocolate Bar Could Come From a Lab — Will It Be Safety Tested?

The company behind Oreo, Cadbury and Toblerone is testing chocolate made with cocoa ingredients produced in bioreactors rather than on cocoa farms.

Two startups — including one working with Mondelēz International — say they can grow cocoa ingredients from plant cells in tanks, potentially reducing dependence on traditional cocoa production as prices rise and supplies tighten.

But critics say lab-grown chocolate raises many of the same questions that have followed cultivated meat for years: safety, contamination, regulation, scalability and consumer demand.

“The first cell-cultured foods are coming onto the market without any government regulation or oversight,” said Alexis Baden-Mayer, research director at Organic Consumers Association.

As companies race to commercialize cocoa grown from plant cells, critics also dispute the industry’s claim that lab-grown cocoa is simply another form of cocoa.