Imagine a burger that did not require raising, feeding or slaughtering any animal. It is not a magic trick or a decades-old novelty: it is lab-grown meat, also called cultivated meat or cellular meat. It sounds like science fiction, but there are already companies producing it, agencies that have approved it and restaurants that have served it. The question now is not whether it will arrive, but how.
What exactly is lab-grown meat?
Let us start from a simple idea: the meat we eat today is, in essence, animal muscle. To get it we need to raise the whole animal, feed it for months or years, and finally slaughter it to keep a small part. Cultivated meat takes a shortcut.
Instead of raising the animal, scientists take a small sample of its cells — real ones, taken from a real animal — and make them grow in the laboratory. In a controlled environment, with the right nutrients and the right temperature, those cells multiply and form muscle tissue. The result is genuine meat, just produced outside the animal.
A process that starts with a tiny biopsy
It all begins with a sample of cells so small it is barely noticeable. It is usually obtained from a biopsy: a minimal extraction that does not harm the animal, which can keep living completely normally.
Those cells are placed in a culture medium, a kind of nutrient-rich “soup” that gives them what they need to grow: amino acids, sugars, vitamins and salts. For the muscles to form properly, many companies use a structure called a “scaffold”, a support that gives them shape and volume. That way, the cells do not grow as a shapeless lump, but organized, as they would in a body.
The process takes weeks, much less than raising an animal. And when the tissue is ready, it is processed just like conventional meat.
And what does it taste like? Is it the same as the real thing?
This is the question everyone asks. The short answer is: yes, it is real meat, because it is made from real muscle cells. More than the 170 companies working in this sector have organized tastings with hundreds of volunteers, and most describe the experience as very similar, even identical in many cases.
There is an important nuance: today it is easier to get minced or processed meat (burgers, nuggets, sausages) than a whole steak with its texture. The structure of a whole muscle is harder to replicate. But the technology advances quickly, and every year more accomplished prototypes appear.
A global race to the plate
The journey of cultivated meat has not been a single event, but a race with several milestones. In 2013 the world’s first lab-made burger was presented, a prototype that cost a fortune. More than a decade later, the price has collapsed: from millions of euros for the first burger to a few euros per gram in recent years.
In 2020 Singapore became the first country to approve the sale of cultivated chicken. Other territories followed, and in 2023 the United States gave the green light to two companies, allowing their products to reach high-end restaurants. In Europe, the food authority is working on the evaluation of several applications, although there is still no large-scale approval.
Why it matters: the environmental (and ethical) cost
Conventional livestock farming has a huge impact. It is responsible for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions, consumes a great deal of water and takes up large areas of land, many of them taken from forests.
Supporters of cellular meat point out that it could drastically reduce all of that: less land, less water and fewer emissions. In addition, it would resolve the ethical question of animal slaughter, and could even improve food safety, since it is produced in fully controlled environments.
That said, there are still legitimate doubts. Producing it at large scale is still expensive and energy-intensive, and some studies qualify that, depending on the method, the environmental savings are not always as great as announced.
The challenges that lie ahead
The industry does not hide its difficulties. The first is price: although it has dropped enormously, producing cheap meals at industrial scale is still a challenge. The second is scale: making the leap from the laboratory to factories able to supply supermarkets requires million-euro investments. And the third is acceptance: convincing the consumer to try something that sounds like science fiction is not an easy task, although tastings suggest that, once tried, the reluctance falls away.
Will we eat lab-grown meat every day?
No one has a crystal ball, but experts point to a gradual transition. It is likely that, at first, cultivated meat will coexist with conventional meat, as a premium or alternative option. Its big ace will come when it manages to be cheaper and as good as the original, something the industry believes is achievable in the coming years.
The truth is that the meat we know has been the same for thousands of years, and this is perhaps the first time science has proposed a real alternative, not a plant imitation, but genuine meat produced in another way. From there, the decision to try it will still be yours.
Lab-grown meat is no longer the future: it is a present under construction. The next time you hear about it, remember that it is not about replacing meat, but about creating another way of producing it.
