Rumors are swirling about 'lab-grown' eggs being sold in the US. Here's what to know

A claim (archived) circulated online in August 2026 that consumers in the U.S. could buy Food and Drug Administration- cleared "lab-grown" eggs and that brands were already secretly including the ingredient in some products.

For example, one Threads user wrote: 

Lab-grown egg proteins have been cleared for sale in the U.S. by the FDA, as companies pour hundreds of millions of dollars into scaling the technology and bringing these "animal-free" proteins into the food supply.

The Threads post and other posts on X (archived) and Instagram (archived) specifically focused on OvoPro, an egg protein The EVERY Company produces. The posts on X and Instagram also claimed that brands did not have to list OvoPro as an ingredient in their products. Snopes readers contacted us about the claims, asking if it was true the FDA "approved" the animal-free egg protein.

The claim was a mixture of true, false and undetermined elements.

Though it was true that egg proteins grown using yeast rather than chickens were available to U.S. consumers in August 2026, products like OvoPro were not new to the market. The EVERY Company, which produces OvoPro, also did not appear to be the only company selling animal-free egg protein to consumers in the U.S.

OvoPro was not FDA "cleared" or "approved" — the latter of which is generally a status reserved for drugs, not food. Rather, in October 2023, the FDA responded with a "no questions" letter to The EVERY Company's declaration that the egg-white protein in OvoPro was "generally recognized as safe." 

We found no evidence that retailers could decide not to list the animal-free egg protein as an ingredient in products that contained it, as some claimed. Federal legislation governs what must appear on ingredients labels. A spokesperson for The EVERY Company said via email on Aug. 21 that the company had not sought to exempt OvoPro from ingredients lists.

Additionally, it was unclear whether OvoPro and other yeast-grown egg proteins could correctly be called "lab-grown," a classification that usually describes products grown from a small sample of the source, as seen with fish, poultry and meat.  A spokesperson for The EVERY Company said:

OvoPro is made through precision fermentation: a yeast (Komagataella phaffii) is given the genetic instructions to produce egg-white protein, and it does so during fermentation. No animal cells, and no chicken, are involved at any point.

What is egg protein grown by yeast?

According to its website, The EVERY Company uses a patented method to produce ovalbumin, the dominant protein in egg whites, through precision fermentation. 

The company described this process as "programming" yeast to produce egg protein through fermentation, a process familiar from beer brewing.

It said the process eventually results in "a pure, powdered protein that is tasteless, colorless, sugar-free, and can be used to replace the functionality of eggs and egg whites in a range of applications."

The EVERY Company received its patent for its method of precision fermentation in September 2024. The company, previously known as Clara Foods, has been working to develop animal-free egg protein since at least 2021.

It unveiled EVERY ClearEgg, a predecessor to OvoPro, in October 2021. The EVERY Company received a "no questions" letter in September 2021 in response to its GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) determination for ClearEgg.

The FDA's GRAS Notification program allows companies to submit documentation that they believe their product is "safe under the conditions of its intended use." In the case of ClearEgg, the FDA said in a letter on Sept. 9, 2021, that it had "no questions," meaning The EVERY Company could market ClearEgg as "Generally Recognized as Safe."

The EVERY Company got another "no questions" letter in response to a GRAS determination for an egg white protein produced by Komagataella phaffii, a species of yeast, in October 2023. A spokesperson for The EVERY Company said on Aug. 21, 2026, that this GRAS notice was for the egg-white protein in OvoPro.

Company sold animal-free eggs before 2026

OvoPro and related products have been available to consumers since at least 2021, meaning they were not new to the U.S. market in August 2026, as some claims appeared to suggest. For example, in November 2021, The Spoon, an outlet that reports on the food tech industry, reported that smoothies containing ClearEgg had hit the market.

The next year, The EVERY Company reportedly sold its EggWhite product in macarons and Every Protein (formerly ClearEgg) in juice. By January 2024, the New York Times wrote that The EVERY Company had showcased EveryEgg, a "yellow vegan plant-based liquid" that the paper said, "behaves astonishingly like a whole beaten egg."

It did not appear that The EVERY Company sold EveryEgg directly to consumers at that point, but rather distributed the product through restaurants.

The new development in 2026 appeared to be that The EVERY Company was selling OvoPro, a successor to EveryEgg, directly to consumers. The company announced on March 11, 2026, that the general public could buy OvoPro through Healthier Comforts, a food retailer, and Amazon.

The company said in June that same year that OvoPro was also available as an ingredient sold in Walmart and Target.

Brands not hiding use of animal-free egg protein

According to some claims, brands could allegedly decide for themselves whether to declare OvoPro as an ingredient in their products. According to one claim the product was "in things on the shelf, and they won't say which."

The EVERY Company's website page on OvoPro said, in reply to a frequently asked question about how the protein appears on ingredient declarations, that "Final labeling decisions are made by our customers, but we recommend labeling OvoPro™ as 'egg white protein (from fermentation),' 'egg white protein (from yeast),' or 'animal-free egg white protein.'"

That did not appear to mean that brands that used OvoPro in their products could avoid labeling them entirely. Federal law dictates that products must generally include an ingredients list, with ingredients listed in descending order according to how much of the product's weight they make up.

A spokesperson for The EVERY Company said that it had never sought to exempt OvoPro from being included in ingredients lists. Speaking via email, the spokesperson added:

"OvoPro" is the trade name we use with the manufacturers who buy the ingredient, so it typically won't appear on a retail pack — the same way most functional ingredients are listed by common name rather than by supplier brand. What appears on the label is the ingredient, named plainly. 

Healthier Comforts listed OvoPro as an "animal-free egg white protein," one of The EVERY Company's suggested phrasings, on its branded version of the product.

In sum ...

Though the claims circulated in August 2026, OvoPro had actually been available to consumers since March of that year. The FDA told The EVERY Company in October 2023 that it had "no questions" regarding the company's declaration that the egg-white protein in OvoPro was GRAS.

That letter was not the same thing as FDA approval, which is a process whereby the administration approves drugs for consumer use. Rather, they showed that the company had documented to the FDA's satisfaction that the product in question was "safe under the conditions of its intended use."

We found no evidence that brands that used OvoPro were leaving it off product ingredients lists. This appeared to be a misinterpretation by some social media users of a statement by The EVERY Company that brands had leeway in how they described the product.

OvoPro is also not the only animal-free egg white protein product available to U.S. consumers.

For further reading, Snopes previously investigated whether Quaker instant strawberries and cream oatmeal contained "beaver butt secretions" or whether McDonald's apple pies contained an ingredient derived from human hair.