Sustainable life choices and the desire to eat clean are encouraging people to seek alternate proteins, but challenges stymie its acceptance and uptake.
Lab-grown – or cultivated – meat is not a novel concept but for all its growth and progress over the past two decades, it has struggled to take off after the initial wave of optimism.
Lab-grown refers to meat developed outside the body of an animal, as opposed to the traditional method of slaughtering living animals. Stem cells are extracted from an animal, cultivated in large tanks called bioreactors, and fed an oxygen- and nutrient-rich cell culture medium. Stem cells differentiate into components such as muscle, fat, and connective tissue, which are later harvested, prepared, and packaged, according to the Good Food Institute (GFI).
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