When I had just graduated college, a classmate of mine went to work for a startup making fake meat. At the time I thought it was kind of silly the way he would talk about trying to get beet juice into the fake meat so it would “bleed” just like a real hamburger. It sort of seemed like he had joined a cult–to be fair, that’s the vibe most Silicon Valley startups give off. Now, eight years later, I buy the Impossible Burgers with the beet juice “blood” at the grocery store, and get Beyond Meat meatballs at my local vegetarian restaurant. The joke was on me, I’ve joined the cult, too. I’m not vegetarian, but I do try to limit my meat consumption, especially beef and pork. Having the “meat substitute” hamburgers on hand helps me do that. But it looks like if you want to eat real meat without an animal dying, that’s now possible for the first time, because the FDA has just approved “lab grown” chicken meat. It’s still made from animal cells, but animals are not slaughtered in production.
Lab grown meat could save land and water as well as animals: For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves.
The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.
The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.
“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.
How they make it is wild: Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside’s case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays.
But don’t look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley.
A couple of years ago I read a super well-researched longform article about the race between Upside and Good Meat to create lab-grown chicken. I tried to find it again, but I couldn’t. In that article, they pointed out how expensive lab grown chicken is. It was something eye-watering like sixty dollars a pound. Who knows what it is now with inflation. So I don’t think this development will meaningfully change anything until it can be produced at scale, like they’ve done with ground beef substitutes. And those are still pretty expensive. The Good Meat website is very slick and they have Jose Andres the celebrity chef as a brand ambassador. He’s going to start using this stuff at one of his restaurants in Washington DC. As an aside, it’s of course great that there’s less land and water use to make the cultured meat, but I see right through the branding here. The “cultured” cells have to be “fed” or grown in some way. They’re not just multiplying by themselves. It’s probably taking an extraordinary amount of energy, and other things I don’t know about, to make this cultured meat. Somewhere in the back of my brain I think at least one of these companies also had funding from a sketchy source, but because I cannot find that article I don’t want to cast aspersions.
Would you eat cultured meat? To be honest, the idea of raw chicken coming out of vats in sheets just feels gross. It’s less gross than a slaughterhouse, yes. But still gross. (I am a hypocrite, I eat chicken, I do not have the moral high ground here at all.) Given how quickly I adapted to the fake meat hamburgers, who knows how I’ll feel about it in a few years. I think I’d rather make a vegetarian version of something–like eggplant parmesan, or “chicken salad” with chickpeas–instead of using cultured meat.
I hope this takes off and leads to the end of the slaughtering of animals for food consumption in the US (to start), and helps to save the environment/ planet.
I don’t mean to target you directly – but the idea that a portion of Americans eating fake meat will help “save” the environment or even make a dent in the greenhouse emissions is laughable. Large scale corps and the state are responsible for the change – and no their emissions are not due to “human demand of meat”.
Sorry, but you are absolutely wrong about that and it’s so sad that Americans have been so misled. Raising animals for food is a larger sources than all forms of transportation *combined*. Studies of the entire life cycle of meat (raising crops, water, slaughter, transportation, refrigeration, etc ) have indicated that meat is responsible for nearly 50% of greenhouse gas production
The UN has published studies showing that meat production is the primary factor behind “nearly every form” of environmental destruction and degradation on the planet- Deforestation, species loss, dead zones in the ocean, drought, etc. the 60 Billion land animals we raise and slaughter every year use extraordinary amounts of resources. (Plus trillions of sea animals slaughtered. ). Livestock, for example, eat 70% of grain that’s grown. So there are millions of human beings starving to death, while billions of animals are fed three times a day do you can eat meat. The whole thing is horrifying.
Never mind the truly disgusting and tortured way animals are raised in factory farms. There is no way any decent human is ok with that kind of abuse – yet everyone is paying for it
The entire destruction of the Amazon – all of it – is to raise cattle and grow soybeans to feed cattle. The destruction created by meat is really insane. We’re eating our way through the planet. All this environmental destruction, global warming, wild fires, etc is so people can eat meat.
the way people make fake food to look like meat is truly funny to me. It’s like have conviction to your beliefs people!! stop being so fake to make a dollar.
I like a balanced diet and don’t consume meat daily, so I’ll stick to my current eating strategies. it’s been doing me well and I don’t need surgeries, meds or gold stars from the “do better” hypocrites
You sound like the kinda comments you see under daily mail articles about vegan sausage rolls… ‘if you don’t like meat why would make it look like meat haha bacon i love bacon’ Lots of people like the taste/meals they eat with meat in, they just don’t want animals killed for it. I don’t see how it’s ‘truly funny’.
Absolutely not. If I want to avoid animal products, I’ll become a vegetarian and not resort to cricket and lab grown meat.
Once I see the WEF and 1% switch from Wagyu at their conferences and put this on their dining menus I’ll reconsider—actually no, I won’t.
The fact that the government and corps have made the common man believe they are responsible for the planet deteriorating through their eating of meat and having more than 1 child is disgusting. Cmon guys. 100 companies in the world are responsible for 71% of global emissions – and that figure is from 2017. Just eat your whole foods – and if that’s not your vibe, then eat your vegetables. Not this Frankenstein ish.
yup, people using other people for their own corporate money making needs isn’t lost on a lot of people who don’t tiktok all day hahaha
actually that’s not true. food systems account for over 1/3rd of all greenhouse emissions, with methane release from livestock and rice cultivation accounting for 35% of all food system emissions. beef and animal products are the biggest emitters. so…in a way the amt of livestock we raise, consume and the way we transport/package is 100% contributing and this isn’t just corporations contributing…it’s all of us and our demand for what we eat. add in food waste, and that amt may be even higher. the WHO, EPA etc have multiple articles on this. fake meat may not be the solution bc who knows the resources used to cultivate the meat, but if we eat less meat/animal products in general, it is going to decrease emissions. sure, regulations on corporations are also needed…but food choices absolutely can change greenhouse emissions, these are not mutually exclusive.
This is amazing! I will definitely switch to lab grown meat consumption. Why hurt animals and the planet unnecessarily?
I’ve tried Impossible Burgers and they taste weird to me – not meat, not plant, just weird and unpleasant. I eat very little meat anyway, so lab-grown isn’t an attraction for me.
I read an article that said a more practical use of this technology would be as an ingredient in a hybrid plant based meat substitute to give it a nearly indistinguishable meat like texture and flavor rather than a stand alone food product. The scale of production required for an ingredient seems more realistic.
I used to volunteer for a rescue group that specializes in birds. We would get many chickens and turkeys who fell off trucks… I say this as someone who is still a meat eater – I don’t get people who say “well this won’t help anything”. Stop – have you ever SEEN the animals in those trucks headed to the plant? Have you ever LIVED near a processing plant? Have you ever seen the working conditions for the humans inside those plants? Putting aside whether or not we’re going to save the planet by eating lab meat – think about improving the lives of the migrants and marginalized semi-rural populations that are doing the butchering. I don’t know how the lab meat is “grown” and I’m sure there is something gross about it, but there’s no f’n way it’s as dangerous or disgusting as the process that involves real animals. It’s an improvement.
I took an animal law class in law school not expecting to have to read detailed accounts of how factory farmed animals are treated, and since I couldn’t opt out of learning that (like those of us who choose not to watch any documentaries about meat production bc we don’t want to know) it became very difficult for me to eat meat. I think a lot of people would feel the same if they knew – and not just like ‘yeah I know it’s bad let’s not talk about it I love bacon’ – but KNOW as in read or watch accounts of being in these slaughterhouses or factory farms. So anyone thinking ‘ew sheets of meat in a metal cylinder sounds gross’ I can assure you it’s worlds less horrifying than how you get your grocery store chicken cutlets.
Apparently these cells are grown in big Olympic pool sized tubs and are regulated to the standards of the bio pharma industry which obviously have to be stringent.
The companies to bring down costs want to be regulated as a food product and I kid you not the person said “because slaughter houses are inherently messy with fecal matter, blood, bacteria” so yeah consider that when you’re thinking about lab grown meat held to a pharma standard versus regular meat held to a slaughter house standard.
How can people be convinced this is a good thing? Fake meat is not meat and it can’t be healthy, can it? I’d rather eat less meat or no meat at all rather than eathing this fake stuff.
I have trouble to fathom and process this actually!
Follow all the stories in the business press and it’s actually just, at the cellular level, just like meat/fish/hwatever – without the other stuff like heavy metals.
Have seen pics of the “pork” towers they’ve built in China – the sows can never scratch themselves, give their piglets affection, or turn around in their entire lives. I’ve loved animals since I was a child and seen the endless slaughterhouse videos. Also the sickening clips of male chicks on conveyor belts on their way to being ground up alive. ETC.
All the posters here seem to know that animal agriculture is unacceptable.
So I would eat cultivated beef, chicken, pork, salmon, octopus, lobster, duck, and all the other proteins in the pipeline – absolutely.
Right now, I don’t eat a lot of the products made from soy and other protein isolates as that’s no health food. But Impossible and Beyond are definitely pretty tasty! Tofu, natto, tempeh, etc., are good plant-based proteins.
Josh Tetrick is selling his cultivated chicken in Singapore at a massive loss but it’s all about being the first-mover for his company.
I’m waiting in line for this and it can’t get here fast enough. I am lucky in that I actually prefer kale to beef but if there was a chicken available that would result in less deforestation and other climate-destroying effects I would definitely try it. Food production evolves and changes, not always for the better, but I am definitely keen on giving this one a chance.
This is great! I can’t wait. Personally i truly believe this is the future. I try to have little meat intake but still the guilt remains… To know that it will be able for animals not to have to suffer anymore just for my own food preference seems great to me.
I firmly believe that in a few generations from now our mass slaughtering of animals will be looked upon as something wild, incomprehensible and archaic, thanks to these steps in science. (As in: can you believe they farmed and mass slaughtered these poor, clever and gentle creatures – that’s wild!)
I love animals and would love for ways to end their slaughter. I eat meat, but not a lot. But honestly, this sounds so disgusting.
There’s no way I am shoving lab-made synthetic food down my children’s bodies or mine. I will stick to the natural eating circuit.
There’s a lot of money being invested in this movement and all the governments want it too. Traditional meat, industrial or traditionally farmed (organic, little farms, etc) will be a luxury for a very small minority (people who can afford to own $100m yachts for example) in the coming years.
Also, the science backs up the fact that at the cellular level it’s exactly like meat. For Wild Type’s salmon, they say it’s just like real salmon as well, without the contaminants and heavy metals.
Have followed this sector for years in the business press, and my guess is their PR teams will do a great job and convert 90%+ of posters like @Sugarhere within the next 10 years.
I’d rather eat real chicken. Sorry not sorry.
I’m really on the fence about this. I want to save the planet and end animal suffering, but I’m leery of eating lab-grown stuff. I feel like my diet is already full of chemicals and plastics and additives and corn syrup, do I really need more of that?
I guess I’m glad it’s not ready for widespread consumer use yet, I need time to adjust to the future!
nah. Modern factory farming has proven to be a disaster for the environment, human health, and animal well being, but this corporate franken food would have us jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Traditional farming is the way to go for all involved.
I’ve been vegetarian for 8 years and vegan for the past year.
While I can appreciate the idea of harming less animals, I will never go back, factory manufactured or otherwise.
How will this impact farmers?
I think this is a wonderful advancement and I hope it contributes to the speedy dismantling of industrial farming. But I also have no interest in feeding it to myself or to my family… just gonna stick with serving less meat altogether.
Yes, I will eat lab-grown meat and I can’t wait! I gave up meat (and most other animal products) 30 years ago for ethical reasons. However, I’ve never stopped missing and craving meat—so I will be first in line for meat that doesn’t involve animal suffering. Sign me up!