Is lab-grown meat really approved for sale, and what does it taste like?

The answer

In June 2023, the US Department of Agriculture approved two companies - Upside Foods and Good Meat - to sell lab-grown (cultivated) chicken in the United States, following Singapore's 2020 approval of Good Meat's product (the world's first). The process involves taking stem cells from a living animal, culturing them in bioreactors with nutrient media, and growing them into muscle and fat tissue over 2–8 weeks. Taste testers at Upside Foods' restaurant launch described the product as genuinely comparable to conventional chicken. However, scalability remains the critical challenge: production costs have fallen from $330,000 per pound in 2013 to roughly $20–50 per pound in 2024, but still far exceed conventional meat prices. Israel's Aleph Farms has cultivated beef steaks, and multiple companies are developing cultivated seafood to address overfishing concerns.