Cultivated meat
Meat grown from animal cells in bioreactors has been approved for sale in a handful of countries since 2020, but volumes remain tiny.
Open in the interactive tree →Cells from a small biopsy are multiplied in nutrient broth and shaped into tissue, so no animal needs to be slaughtered for each product. The main hurdles are cost, growth media, scaling to large bioreactors, and consumer and political acceptance.
As of October 2026
Documented approvals: Singapore (Dec 2020), USA (chicken June 2023; Wildtype salmon May 2025), Israel (beef, Jan 2024) and Australia/New Zealand (Vow quail, Apr 2025). USA also cleared Mission Barns cultivated pork fat (2025) and Believer Meats chicken (2025; the company ceased operations); Singapore also approved Vow quail (2024) and Parima (chicken 2025, duck 2026); the UK allowed cultivated pet food (Meatly). In the EU no cell-cultured food of animal origin has been approved; EFSA received Gourmey's duck foie gras application in September 2024, and Mosa Meat applied in January 2025. Italy banned the products in Nov 2023, as did US states such as Florida and Alabama. Approvals and EFSA decisions during 2026 could not be checked, so this list may be incomplete.
Open steps
- Serum-free growth media via optimization Medium AI leverageUse Bayesian optimization and neural surrogates to find cheap growth media that maintain cell proliferation and meat-quality traits.
- Metabolic engineering for waste Medium AI leverageUse flux-balance and learned metabolic models to suppress wasteful pathways (lactate, ammonia overflow) in industrial cell lines.
- Bioreactor control for structure Medium AI leverageDesign or control bioreactors that guide cell alignment and differentiation into structured tissue with fiber orientation.
Where AI could help
Medium AI leverage. AI can search cheaper growth media and cell lines, but bioreactor scale-up, product structure and regulators decide whether volumes grow.
- Optimise serum-free growth media for cost and growth with Bayesian optimisation
- Model cell metabolism to cut waste products and the need for expensive growth factors
- Design growth factors and engineered cell lines that need fewer inputs
- Control bioreactors with learned models to raise yield and reduce contamination
Shown so far
- In 2023, a multi-objective Bayesian algorithm searched for serum-free growth media that lower cost and keep growth high for mouse C2C12 cells, a stand-in for muscle cells for food. source
Prerequisites
- Animal domestication~9000 BC
- Cell theory1838
- Cell culture and HeLa cells1951