Purveyors of lab-grown meat — who prefer the term “cell-cultivated,” to avoid the mad-scientist-with-a-test-tube image — foresee a world where our plates are full of steak but animal slaughter is largely a thing of the past.
Why it matters: Investors are pouring money into the sector and its promise of cruelty-free meals that are (maybe) better for the environment, but many unknowns remain.
- For now, meat grown from animal cells is only available in the U.S. in very limited quantities at two high-end restaurants.
- Chicken is the first proof-of-concept product, and while the taste is familiar, the texture is a work in progress.
- It remains to be seen if the technology to “grow” meat at scale will prove economical — and if consumers will welcome the results.
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Of note: The products are not to be confused with plant-based meat, which has lately had rocky prospects.
- “It is unmistakable that this is chicken or beef,” said Uma Valeti, the CEO of Upside Foods, which made some of the first cultivated meatballs, chicken and duck.
- “All the fundamental building blocks come from cells,” he told Axios. “We get cells from the animal or eggs — all we need is a drop.”
Where it stands: Two Bay Area companies — Upside Foods and Good Meat — have gained regulatory approval to sell their first product, cultivated chicken.
- Chef Dominique Crenn is serving tiny quantities of Upside’s chicken at Bar Crenn in San Francisco as part of a monthly $150 tasting menu.
- Chef José Andrés is serving Good Meat’s version at his China Chilcano restaurant in Washington, D.C. — if you can get a reservation.
- The sold-out $70 tasting menu includes “Anticuchos de Pollo, cultivated chicken marinated with anticucho sauce, native potatoes and ají amarillo chimichurri.”
Yes, but: If you want to buy it in a retail store, you’ll have to go to Singapore. Good Meat‘s chicken went on sale in December at Huber’s Butchery there after Singapore became the first country to approve cultivated meat.
![Companies producing lab-grown meat aim to achieve a world where steak is produced without animal slaughter Companies producing lab-grown meat aim to achieve a world where steak is produced without animal slaughter steak](https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1221422/steak.jpg)
How it works: To make cultivated meat, animal cells are placed in a large steel vessel called a bioreactor — or “cultivator” — and fed for at least two weeks with a variety of nutrients, which help the cells grow and differentiate similarly to how they would in a living animal.
- Depending on how the cells are nurtured, the product can emerge in the consistency of soup or pancake batter — to be formed into a sausage or nugget — or in a filet-like sliver of meat.
- “Instead of raising a chicken, we are raising chicken cells, letting the cells do what they naturally do, which is grow,” said Valeti, a cardiologist who founded Upside Foods in 2015.
- Unlike at a farm, “we don’t have fecal matter; we do not have the skin and the hair and the bones” of the animal. It’s “significantly more efficient than growing an entire animal and eating only a part” of it, said Valeti.
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