Cultivated meat — also known as lab-grown, cultured, or cell-based meat — is real animal meat produced by growing animal cells directly, without raising and slaughtering livestock. By taking a small biopsy of muscle cells from a living animal and proliferating them in a controlled environment with nutrients and growth factors, scientists can produce meat that is biologically identical to conventional meat. This technology promises to dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of meat production while addressing animal welfare concerns and food security challenges.
How Cultivated Meat Is Produced
The production process begins with obtaining stem cells or satellite cells (muscle precursor cells) from a living animal through a small, painless biopsy. These cells are placed in a bioreactor — a sterile vessel that provides the controlled conditions needed for cell growth — and supplied with a culture medium containing nutrients, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and growth factors that replicate the signals cells receive in a living animal.
In the bioreactor, cells multiply rapidly, doubling every 24 to 48 hours. Once sufficient cells have been grown, they are induced to differentiate into the cell types that make up meat: muscle fibres, fat cells, and connective tissue. For unstructured products like ground meat, sausages, and nuggets, the cells can simply be harvested and formed. For structured products like steaks and chicken breasts, cells must be grown on edible scaffolds that provide the three-dimensional architecture needed for realistic texture.
Environmental Potential
Conventional livestock production is one of the most resource-intensive human activities. It occupies roughly 77 percent of global agricultural land while producing only 18 percent of calories and 37 percent of protein consumed worldwide. Livestock generate approximately 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, consume vast quantities of freshwater, and are a leading driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss.
Life-cycle analyses suggest that cultivated meat could reduce land use by up to 95 percent, water consumption by up to 78 percent, and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 92 percent compared to conventional beef production. However, these projections depend heavily on achieving clean energy-powered production at scale — current small-scale facilities remain energy-intensive.
Current Progress and Challenges
In 2023, Singapore became the first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat, followed by the United States, where two companies received approval to sell cultivated chicken. Several dozen startups worldwide are developing cultivated versions of beef, pork, chicken, fish, and seafood, with investment in the sector exceeding several billion dollars.
The primary challenge is cost. Early cultivated meat products cost thousands of dollars per kilogram to produce. Achieving cost parity with conventional meat requires solving several technical problems: developing affordable, food-grade culture media (which currently represents 55-95 percent of production costs), scaling bioreactor technology from laboratory to industrial volumes, and improving cell growth rates and densities.
Scaffolding technology for structured products remains an active area of research. Approaches include plant-based edible scaffolds, decellularised plant tissues (like spinach leaves whose cells have been removed, leaving the vascular structure), and 3D-printed scaffolds made from food-grade polymers.
Regulatory and Consumer Landscape
Regulatory frameworks for cultivated meat are evolving rapidly, with agencies in the EU, UK, Japan, Israel, and other nations developing approval pathways. Labelling remains contentious — the conventional meat industry in several countries has lobbied to restrict the use of terms like “meat” for cell-based products.
Consumer acceptance varies significantly by market. Surveys consistently show higher acceptance in Asia and younger demographics, with concerns about safety, taste, cost, and “naturalness” being the primary barriers in Western markets. As products improve in taste and texture and prices fall toward conventional meat levels, cultivated meat is positioned to become a significant component of the global protein supply within the coming decades.
