The words “lab-grown meat” can conjure up a foggy image of suspicious red goo in petri dishes. That doesn’t exactly seem appetizing, but there’s certainly more to this innovative food product than meets the eye.
Lab-grown meat is still in its infancy and really only recently came into public view. There are plenty of questions swirling about this new meat alternative, and as climate concerns and ethical considerations are at the forefront of many consumers’ minds, it’s no wonder why unconventional protein sources are one of the 11 food trends we predicted for 2025. With the product still being refined, it’s hard to say when it’ll reach widespread availability. But, who knows? Lab-grown meat might just be the new norm in fridges across the globe a few short years from now.
So whether you’re an avid meat eater on the hunt for a more sustainable solution, a brand new animal welfare-focused vegetarian, or just a curious consumer, here is exactly what you need to know about lab-grown meat.
What exactly is lab-grown meat?
Lab-grown meat – also known as cultivated meat (the industry-adopted term), cultured meat, or cell-based meat – is meat produced from animal cells rather than from the traditional raising and slaughtering of animals.
The process begins by collecting a sample of stem cells from a live animal. The collected cells are placed in steel vats called bioreactors. Inside the bioreactors, are culture media made of amino acids, glucose, vitamins, and other important nutrients to encourage the cells to multiply. From there, the cells are scaffolded into the desired shape, like ground meat or a steak. And the more complex the structure, the harder it is to scaffold the cells into the right position.
Globally, there are more than 150 companies developing cultivated meat, with varieties ranging from poultry to red meat to seafood. In the United States, some notable companies include the Alameda, California-headquartered Eat Just, which produces Good Meat cultivated chicken; Berkeley, California-based Upside Foods, also producing lab-grown chicken; and BlueNalu in San Diego, California, which makes cell-based seafood.
It’s different from plant-based meat alternatives
Though they’re both made to simulate real meat, lab-grown meat is different from plant-based meat alternatives, like those produced by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Plant-based meat alternatives are made with vegan ingredients, like soy protein. Impossible Foods also uses heme to enhance the meaty taste and texture of the product, making it and other imitation meats one of the 12 best vegetarian friendly burger alternatives.
On the other hand, cultivated meat is made from animal cells and grown in a lab. Good Meat makes clear on its website that the chicken it produces isn’t plant-based, vegan, or vegetarian. Nonetheless, the company notes that “if you follow a vegan or vegetarian diet because of animal welfare or environmental concerns, Good Meat may be a great option for you” because of the slaughter-less production process and potential for a smaller carbon footprint. But if you follow a vegan or vegetarian diet for the purported health benefits or because you don’t like the taste of meat, cultivated meat probably won’t be for you.
Is it safe?
Though lab-grown meat is still a relatively new product, it took a big step forward in November 2022 when the US Food and Drug Administration approved it as safe for human consumption. The FDA was specifically referring to Upside Foods, and in a statement the agency said after evaluating information submitted by the company “as part of a pre-market consultation for their food made from cultured chicken cells,” it “has no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion.” Good Meat was given the same thumbs up by the FDA in 2023.
Beyond having safety approval from the American government, researchers at UCLA say cultivated meat is “almost nutritionally identical to farm- or ranch-raised meat,” and there’s potential for the product to be healthier than traditional meat, too, as the culture media can be adjusted to “add certain vitamins and nutrients.” Compared to traditionally farmed meat, lab-grown meat could even have decreased instances of salmonella and other foodborne diseases.
Where can you buy it?
Dozens of companies are striving to bring cultivated meat to the general public, but you can’t exactly grab a bite of it at your local diner or snag a pound off American grocery store shelves. Nonetheless, two U.S. restaurants previously served lab-grown meat: Bar Crenn in San Francisco and China Chilcano in Washington D.C. Known for its masterfully curated cocktail program and Michelin-starred tasting menu, Bar Crenn (the brainchild of world-renowned chef Dominique Crenn) began serving portions of lab-grown chicken from Upside Foods in August 2023. But the collaboration didn’t last long, and the final cultivated meat dish was served in January 2024.
Across the country, China Chilcano — a Peruvian restaurant with Asian flair by culinary innovator José Andrés — similarly experimented with lab-grown chicken. According to a China Chilcano web page dedicated to the experience, customers could make a reservation to try the Good Meat Anticucho, “cultivated chicken marinated with anticucho sauce, native potatoes, and ají Amarillo chimichurri.” The dish was available as part of the tasting menu, and was only served from July to September 2023 before the restaurant updated the page to say reservations to try the dish were paused.
For now, there’s only one place you can buy cultivated meat, and it’s all the way in Singapore. If your curiosity gets the best of you, stop by Huber’s Butchery and pick up a quarter pound of lab-grown meat for 7.20 Singapore dollars, or about $5.30.
Why isn’t it widely available across the U.S.?
All of this information about lab-grown meat sounds pretty promising, right? Well, try to curb your enthusiasm. Despite its FDA approval and test runs in fine dining establishments, lab-grown meat will be pretty difficult for the everyday consumer to track down. There are a few reasons for this.
For one, it’s pricey to create, and cultivated meat companies aren’t yet able to produce the products at a scale large enough to meet Americans’ demand for conventionally farmed meat. To give you an idea of what companies like Upside Foods and Good Meat are up against: Americans consume more than 8 billion chickens annually. That’s more than 100 pounds of chicken per person every year. Beef consumption isn’t too far behind, with the average American eating roughly 60 pounds worth in 2021. Beyond the price, hostility from governments at the state level (and abroad) has also proven to be a barrier to bringing lab-grown meat to the masses.
Certain governments are opposed to lab-grown meat
As we know, there are plenty of real meats that have been made illegal in the U.S. So, which governments have put the kibosh on cultivated meat? In 2024, Florida and Alabama banned it outright, looking to preserve cattle ranching and other more traditional agricultural practices. Similar bills were considered in Tennessee and Arizona, but weren’t enacted.
Lab-grown meat also caught Iowa’s eye, and shortly after the bans were made in Florida and Alabama, the Hawkeye State’s governor signed a law prohibiting the “misbranding of certain food products” like cultivated and plant-based meat. Since the law went into effect, those products sold in Iowa stores carry labels denoting that they weren’t created via the traditional raising and slaughtering of animals. Labeling guidelines like the one in Iowa will be one way to identify lab-grown chicken when it finally hits grocery store shelves.
Overseas, Italy became the first country to outlaw cultivated meat. The nationwide ban was authorized in 2023, and Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida took to Facebook to announce that in “defense of health, of the Italian production system, of thousands of jobs, of our culture and tradition. With the law approved today, Italy is the first nation in the world to be safe from the social and economic risks of synthetic food.”
Lab-grown meat is expensive
As mentioned above, with cultivated meat still in its early stages, the price tag is mighty high. In fact, the first lab-grown burger cost roughly $330,000 when it was produced in 2013. Since then, the production cost has dipped and it now hovers around $17 per pound. To put that in perspective, in January 2025, ground beef was rather expensive, with average prices about $5.55 per pound. For boneless chicken breasts in 2024, the average price was $4.10 per pound. Both are still more than $10 cheaper per pound than lab-grown meat.
Much like with any innovative food product, there are a number of hurdles between cultivated meat companies and the refrigerators of consumers. Some issues that contribute to the sticker shock include high startup costs and the need for sizable contributions from investors, regulatory barriers and widespread government acceptance, as well as worldwide meat consumption habits and practices.
Lab-grown meat tastes pretty similar to the real thing
If all this talk of cultivated meat has got you itching for a taste, here’s a bit of information for you to nibble on: lab-grown meat tastes pretty similar to the real thing. It might be hard to believe that something produced in a big steel vat could taste even remotely similar to your favorite chicken tenders or burger, but it’s true. Cultivated meat isn’t that far off from traditionally farmed chicken or beef.
A climate reporter from the MIT Technology Review compared lab-grown beef to the real thing as well as a plant-based alternative and found that compared to the vegan option, “the lab-grown meat may have been a bit closer to the beef burger.” As for lab-grown chicken, a food and nutrition reporter from AP said a taste test of a cultivated chicken “thigh” dish at Good Meat’s Alameda, California facility revealed a taste that “was richer than a chicken breast, more like the dark meat of a thigh.” All in all, it tasted like, well, chicken.
There are still some questions about its sustainability
On its surface, lab-grown meat seems like a more sustainable option than traditional animal agriculture. After all, animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. With meat consumption expected to increase across the world, so will animal agriculture’s environmental footprint.
When it comes to the production of cultivated meat, it could use 99% less land and between 82% and 96% less water than traditional animal farming practices. Despite these possible upsides, researchers at UC Davis say that the product is not intrinsically better for the planet and that cultivated meat’s global warming potential is actually between four and 25 times greater than that of conventional beef. This is due to the growth media used in the product needing to be purified to pharmaceutical levels, using more energy in the process.
The findings have yet to be peer reviewed, but when discussing the preprint, one of those UC Davis researchers said if cultivated meat “continues to be produced using the ‘pharma’ approach, it’s going to be worse for the environment and more expensive than conventional beef production.”
It may become a suitable option for some religious groups
There are billions of people around the world who don’t eat pork or other foods due to religious laws, but with the advent of lab-grown meat, some things might change. Not all Jewish and Islamic authoritative bodies have come to a consensus, but in 2023, the Jewish Orthodox Union gave the kosher stamp of approval to a specific strain of cultivated chicken. This could be a major development for the over 12 million kosher consumers in the United States.
Good Meat consulted three scholars from Saudi Arabia for a Shariah opinion on the company’s lab-grown chicken, and the scholars said it could be halal, so long as it follows a few guidelines. For example, the cells need to come from animals Muslims are allowed to consume, and the nutrients fed to those cells to encourage their multiplication must not include substances Muslims are prohibited to consume. Should lab-grown meat companies abide by these guidelines, they’ll open the door for roughly two billion Muslim consumers to test out their products.
