On August 5th, 2013, Dutch scientist, Mark Post, presented the first ever cell-grown burger. It was made from actual animal protein and fat without the need to farm or butcher a cow, and it was cooked and eaten at a televised news conference in London. Since then, you may have heard of this sort of technology by one name or another: lab-grown meat, in-vitro meat, clean meat, cultured meat. The name will likely be in the air for some time, but supporters and companies seem to be converging on the word “cultivated” to describe these alternative meats.

The appeal of such a product is clear. Currently our food systems account for nearly 30% of the annual global greenhouse gas emissions, with animal products accounting for more than half of that according to a 2023 report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Given the impacts of climate change and habitat loss on communities and ecosystems around the world, and given the need to expand our food systems to meet growing demand, exploring alternative meat options with reduced impact on the environment is critical.

The report shows that cultivated meat production could potentially achieve a 98% decrease in emissions compared to conventional beef, particularly if renewable energy sources are used. Cultivated meat would also require as little as 1-2% of the land space required by animal products, which currently use around 36% of all habitable land on the planet. In addition, it has the potential to significantly reduce the spread of animal-borne pathogens, including swine and bird flu, and growing meat directly from cells has clear advantages in terms of animal welfare.

For the industry to grow, however, people need to be aware of it. Surveys in the United States suggest that half of Americans have never heard of cultivated meat or one of its alternative names. So let’s hear about it. What is cultivated meat? How is it made? And how long till we can try it?

Cultivated meat production uses many of the same technologies that make stem cell research and cell-based therapeutics possible. It involves taking cells from a donor and coaxing them into dividing and taking on new shapes and functions using chemical cues, and the first step in the process is to decide which cell line to use.

The ideal choice is to use something less differentiated, or functionally defined, like stem cells. These divide more rapidly, can turn into many other cell types, and can be kept alive and productive indefinitely. Unfortunately, the conditions needed to culture stem cell lines are not well understood for many animals, especially aquatic animals. This, along with cell line accessibility, is the largest barrier to entry for many companies. However, recent progress has been made in developing various stem cell lines, and licence-free repositories for these lines have started to emerge.

After a cell line is chosen, starter cells are harvested and stored long-term using cryopreservation or grown in cell culture media. This includes all of the basic nutrients for cell survival like amino acids, vitamins, and sugars as well as specific factors that promote division or differentiation. Media is by far the most costly component for cultivated meat production and would benefit the most from optimization. One liter of pharmaceutical-grade media costs about $600 at the low end, but if cultivated meat is to be sold as cheaply as conventional meat, media needs to drop to under $1 per liter according to an analysis from Ark Biotech. 

To address this, companies have begun partnering with food-grade ingredient manufacturers as a way to significantly reduce cost. Researchers are also currently investigating how agricultural waste products can be used to replace media components, which would support a more circular economy, keeping limited environmental resources in use much longer.

So now we have cells, and we have cell food. How do we get something structured like a steak, which requires both muscle and fat to come together in specific ways? Here we use scaffolds, materials that bind cells and provide shape. These can be made of animal material like collagen, but scientists have also demonstrated the successful use of plant and fungal scaffolds.

A challenge in creating these structured products is getting nutrients in and cell waste out. If this doesn’t happen, cells on the interior become necrotic and unusable, keeping manufacturers from making products of any considerable size. Right now the common work-around is to grow cells on separate scaffolds and then reassemble everything into a finished product.

Another issue is that different cells often have different culturing requirements and, when combined, can influence each other’s biology in unexpected ways. One lab, however, has been able to grow pork muscle and fat cells on the same scaffold, showing promising avenues to overcome this problem.

After all that, you have something designed to mimic the taste, texture, and nutritional content of meat with only a one-time involvement of any animal. There’s much more detail than I could fit here, so for further reading I’d highly recommend checking out all the nitty gritty details at the Good Food Institute, a non-profit organization promoting the development of the alternative protein industry.

At this point, you’re probably wondering when you’ll have your own opportunity to eat a cell-grown burger. (Or maybe not. No judgment!) A big part of that will be social buy-in, and the factors affecting this will vary from person to person. Providing a similar dining experience to conventional meat or aligning with ideological beliefs are important considerations, as are nutritional profile and safety. We already have these profiles for some products, with more hopefully to come soon. Regulatory approval applications for GOOD Meat and Vow are openly available and include comprehensive risk assessments and report nutritional content similar to their conventional meat counterparts. 

It will also be critical that, in conversations about the growth of the industry, we include input from various groups. This means those economically impacted by the industry, like farmers who will need to either compete or cooperate with cultivated meat. This also means those who could take advantage of novel technologies but who have historically been excluded from their benefits, including indigenous and low-income communities.

How quickly we encounter cultivated meat will also depend on government approval. In 2020, cultivated chicken from Eat Just was approved for sale in Singapore, the first approval for cultivated meat in the world. 2023 was also a big year for the industry, seeing the approval of 2 cultivated chicken products in the United States and a cultivated beef product in Israel. Until last February, it was even possible for Americans to go out and try cultivated chicken at either Bar Crenn in San Francisco or China Chilcano in Washington, DC. More recently, a line of cultivated meat pet treats was launched in the United Kingdom.

The cultivated meat industry has also had its share of set-backs. For example, cultivated meat bans have been successful in two states, Florida and Alabama, and one country, Italy. The recent confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as US Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services introduces further uncertainty on the near-future success of cultivated meat and alternative proteins in the United States given the critical stances he’s taken on these industries.

It’s hard to tell right now, so we’ll just need to wait and see. Globally, we are seeing a trend toward thoughtful and methodical assessment of cultivated meat. Some cultivated meat companies are optimistic and currently focusing on improving their manufacturing processes and scaling up their facilities. We can share a bit of that optimism in the coming years, and though we shouldn’t expect to try a sample too soon, it’s important to remember that just a decade ago we had our very first proof-of-concept. The next decade is likely to bring many more accomplishments.