Cultured meat facts for kids

The first cell-cultured hamburger, cooked at a news conference in London, 2013

Cultured chicken in pasta salad, served at a restaurant in Singapore, 2023

Cultured meat, also called cultivated meat, is real meat made without raising and farming full animals. It is made using cellular agriculture, where scientists take tiny animal cells and grow them in clean tanks. This technique is called cell culturing, and it lets cells multiply in vitro (meaning outside of a living body). This creates muscle and fat that are biologically identical to regular meat. The method uses tissue engineering tools developed for regenerative medicine. Cultured meat could help reduce the environmental impact of meat production, protect animal welfare, and improve food security and human health.

People have imagined this technology for a very long time. In 1931, British leader Winston Churchill wrote that people would one day grow specific parts like chicken breasts directly instead of raising whole animals. In the early 2000s, researcher Jason Matheny helped popularize the idea and founded New Harvest, the world's first non-profit organization to fund this research. In 2013, scientist Mark Post cooked and showed off the first laboratory-grown hamburger in London. Since then, companies around the world have created many prototype foods. In 2020, a food place called The Chicken opened in Tel Aviv by the company SuperMeat to test consumer reactions. That same year in Singapore, meat made by the company Eat Just was sold at a restaurant named 1880.

Most researchers focus on common foods like chicken, beef, and pork, but others make seafood like grouper or special treats like Wagyu beef, bison, and lamb. Companies and research teams are working hard to make production easier and cheaper. Non-profit groups like The Good Food Institute track how this food develops. While still rare in regular grocery stores, cultivated food is slowly entering markets around the world.

What Is Cultured Meat Called?
The History of Growing Meat
How Cultivated Meat Is Made
Benefits and Challenges
Ethical and Cultural Perspectives
Related Food Innovations
Images for kids
See also

What Is Cultured Meat Called?

People use several different names to talk about this new food. Common names include cultivated meat, cell-based meat, slaughter-free meat, and clean meat. In the news, reporters often call it lab-grown meat. However, food makers prefer terms like cultivated meat. They point out that large food makers grow it in clean production facilities that look like food breweries rather than science labs. The speaker Bruce Friedrich often describes these future facilities as "meat breweries."

Between 2016 and 2019, many people used the phrase "clean meat" to highlight its environmental perks. Over time, groups like The Good Food Institute found that "cultivated meat" sounded clearer and friendlier to everyday shoppers. Surveys show that a big majority of food company leaders prefer calling it cultivated meat. Sometimes people call it artificial meat, but scientists note that the animal cells themselves are completely real.

The History of Growing Meat

Early Ideas and Discoveries

The raw patty for the first cultured hamburger made in 2013.

The dream of cultivating meat started decades ago. In the 1950s, a Dutch researcher named Willem van Eelen became passionate about safe food supplies. He realized that modern discoveries of cell lines meant people might grow food from cells. In 1971, a researcher named Russell Ross grew muscle fibers from guinea pig aorta tissue in a lab dish. Later, in 1991, inventor Jon F. Vein earned a patent for producing food from cultured muscle and fat.

During the early 2000s, space scientists joined the effort. In 2002, NASA funded tests that grew goldfish muscle to see if astronauts could make fresh food on long missions. Artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr grew tiny amounts of frog cells in 2003 to encourage discussions on science ethics. In 2008, the animal charity PETA offered a prize of one million dollars to the first group that could sell cultured chicken to the public, which sparked huge excitement. Scientists in the Netherlands and the Dutch government invested money into tests, and Time called it one of the top ideas of 2009.

The First Burger Tasting

In August 2013, professor Mark Post revealed the very first cultivated beef burger patty at a conference in London. His team spent two years making it from 20,000 tiny strands of muscle, costing over $325,000. Chef Richard McGeown cooked the burger, and food experts like Hanni Rützler tasted it on live television. Rützler reported that it had good browning, a firm bite, and tasted remarkably close to standard meat rather than soy copies. This historic test proved that growing real food in this manner was possible.

Growth of the Industry

Between 2015 and 2024, dozens of new companies started up worldwide. In the United States, a startup called Upside Foods showed off cultivated meatballs and chicken tenders. In Israel, companies like Future Meat Technologies and Aleph Farms developed quick ways to grow meat cells. Aleph Farms even tested printing cells in space on the International Space Station. In the Netherlands, a company named Meatable figured out how to use cells from animal umbilical cords so no animals are hurt.

Governments began helping as well. The European Commission funded food tech projects, and scientists in Belgium built research teams to test cultivated fats. By 2023, billions of dollars had been invested worldwide in startups like Wildtype and Believer Meats. In 2024 and 2025, scientists showed that cow cells could produce their own growth factors and keep multiplying naturally, making production much cheaper.

Reaching Restaurants and Markets

Starting in December 2020, Singapore became the first country to approve cultured chicken nuggets from Eat Just for restaurants. Later, diners enjoyed cultivated dishes in local hawker centre spots. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture approved chicken from Upside Foods and Good Meat in 2023. By 2025, Wildtype began serving cultivated coho salmon at the famous Kann restaurant in Portland.

Other nations joined the movement soon after. In early 2024, Israel approved cultivated beef from Aleph Farms. In 2025, Australia and New Zealand approved cultivated quail made by the food startup Vow. Countries in the European Union began studying safety reports from companies like Gourmey and Mosa Meat. Meanwhile, businesses also created cultivated pet food for dogs and cats in the United Kingdom.

How Cultivated Meat Is Made

A simple step-by-step diagram showing how cultured meat is grown.

Selecting the Cells

The process begins with finding healthy animal cells. Scientists usually choose stem cells because they can divide many times and transform into different tissues. Adult stem cells can turn into specific tissues, while pluripotent stem cells can become almost any cell type in the body. Scientists can also create induced pluripotent stem cells, allowing skin or blood cells to act like early stem cells.

Cells naturally have caps on their DNA called telomeres that shorten with each division. Scientists look for cells that divide smoothly without stopping. Technicians gather these cells through a quick, painless biopsy from a live, healthy farm animal under local medicine. The animal continues living safely while its cells are preserved in special cold storage.

Feeding the Cells

Next, the cells are placed inside a liquid bath called a culture medium. This medium acts like food, giving the cells carbohydrates, amino acids, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals. When cells take in these nutrients, they divide rapidly and multiply. The medium also contains special messenger proteins called growth factors that tell the cells when to grow and when to change into muscle fibers.

As the growing cells work, they produce natural acids that change the pH balance of the liquid. To keep the cells healthy, fresh nutrient broth must be added regularly. Scientists work hard to make growth broths entirely from plants, algae, or helpful bacteria, avoiding any ingredients taken from animal blood.

Building Structures with Scaffolds

Microscope view of muscle tissue forming neat, aligned fibers.

To make structured foods like steaks or chicken breasts, cells need something to hold onto while they form. In nature, cells grow inside a mesh called the extracellular matrix, made of natural collagen, glycoproteins, and enzymes. In food production, scientists create 3D meshes called scaffolds to guide the cells into meat shapes.

Cellulose: This strong plant material forms the support of leaves. By washing plant leaves like spinach, bamboo, or celery, scientists leave behind safe cellulose shapes that cells love to climb on.
Chitin: Found in the shells of arthropod animals and the walls of fungi, chitin can be processed into a clean fiber called chitosan, which naturally fights bacteria like E. coli.
Collagen: This natural animal protein provides flexibility, but it can also be grown using friendly yeasts and bacteria.
Mycelium: The underground root threads of mushrooms make thick, fibrous structures that work well for bacon-like foods.
Plant Fibers: Common foods like soy protein can be spun into porous sponges that hold water and provide a chewy bite.

Growing Inside Bioreactors

A laboratory bioreactor used to grow cells in warm, nutrient-rich broth.

The cells and their scaffolds are placed inside large stainless-steel machines called Bioreactors. These tanks look just like the big vats used to make yogurt, bread yeast, or cheese. The bioreactors keep the temperature at an ideal 37 °C (99 °F) for cow or chicken cells, while keeping oxygen and carbon dioxide levels perfectly balanced.

Spinning paddles gently stir the liquid so that every single cell gets plenty of fresh food. In some systems, tiny microcarrier beads float in the broth to give cells plenty of surface area to stick to. Once the cells grow into thick layers of muscle and fat, the meat is harvested and prepared for cooking. Food makers can even use 3D bioprinting to lay down precise stripes of muscle and fat to recreate juicy steaks.

Benefits and Challenges

Helping the Environment

Traditional farming requires massive amounts of land, water, and feed crops for livestock. Producing meat directly from cells uses much less space. Studies show that growing meat in clean facilities can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 92% when powered by clean electricity. It also uses up to 95% less land and 78% less water than traditional beef farming. Land saved from farming could be returned to nature as forests and wildlife parks.

Cultivated facilities produce far less agricultural waste. Unlike big animal feedlots, these closed systems prevent farm manure from washing into streams or releasing large amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere.

Cleanliness and Health

Cultivated food is grown in completely clean, sanitized environments. Because of this, farmers do not need to give animals antibiotics. This helps stop dangerous bacteria from becoming resistant to medicines, which is an important health goal worldwide. The meat is also kept away from common food bugs like Salmonella. Scientists can even adjust the fats in the meat, adding healthy nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids to make burgers healthier for human hearts.

Big Challenges to Solve

Even with its promise, cultivated meat faces hurdles before it reaches every grocery shelf:

High Costs: The liquid food that cells eat is very expensive to make. While costs have dropped from hundreds of thousands of dollars to small sums per pound, cultivated meat is still pricier than regular factory-farmed meat.
Scale and Equipment: Building gigantic bioreactor facilities takes lots of money, steel, and energy.
Rules and Laws: Food agencies check novel foods thoroughly to make sure they are totally safe. Some places, like Italy, Florida, and Alabama, even passed laws banning cultivated meat to protect traditional farm heritage.
Shopper Habits: Many people are unfamiliar with the concept. Some folks worry it seems unnatural, while others are excited to try meat made without hurting animals.

Ethical and Cultural Perspectives

Cultivated meat does not involve a nervous system, meaning it feels no pain. Because of this, many animal welfare groups strongly support it. Bioethicists like Julian Savulescu believe it provides a kinder way to feed the world's growing population.

Religious scholars are also studying how these new foods fit ancient traditions. In Judaism, many rabbis agree that cultivated meat can be kosher if the original cells were gathered properly. In Islam, scholars have noted that cultivated meat can be halal as long as cells come from permitted species. Leaders in religions like Hinduism, which honors cows, generally avoid beef in any form, though discussions continue about other cultivated foods.

Related Food Innovations

Plant-based patties can use fermentation ingredients to create a meaty flavor.

Along with growing muscle cells, food scientists also use acellular agriculture. This method uses friendly microbes to create animal proteins like milk whey, egg whites, and gelatin without any animals at all.

Scientists give bacteria or yeast tiny loops of genetic instructions called plasmids. This recombinant DNA instructs the microbes to make specific food proteins through simple fermentation, similar to how bakers make yeast bread. Once the fermentation is complete, the proteins are washed and used to make dairy-free ice cream, cheese, and baked treats. Combined with plant-based meats and cell-grown foods, these discoveries are shaping the future of how the world eats.