Lab-Grown Meat Coming Soon to a Supermarket Near You

In recent years, there has been a cry for “fake/imitation meat” and for “clean meat”. The former is widely available and is usually plant-based: quorn, tofurkey, alpro, and okara are a few examples.

Clean meat, on the other hand, is not quite there yet. It’s actually more like real meat (not a mere substitute). The difference is that it doesn’t require raising animals and slaughtering them. It’s meat

It’s meat, but grown in a lab.

The predecessor of food from replicators.

It doesn’t sound so enticing – at least for me – but there are benefits to clean meat, especially in terms of humane treatment of animals and carbon footprint.

It is thus no surprise that companies working on clean meat have raised a lot of capital. Hampton Creek (known for its vegan mayo) alone has raised more than $120 million since 2011 and it recently announced that it’s just about ready to take its lab-grown meat to market.

In an interview with Quartz, CEO Josh Tetrick says that by the end of next year, they will have “something out there on the marketplace” – providing another option for those who don’t want to eat real meat for one reason or another.

What exactly is lab-grown meat?

From Cleanmeat.com:

Clean meat is produced by taking a small sample of animal cells and replicating them in a culture outside of the animal. The resulting product is 100 percent real meat, but without the antibiotics, E. coli, salmonella, or waste contamination.

So, when lab-grown meat makes it to market, will you fall in line to get a taste?