Could Your Next Burger Be Grown in a Laboratory? The Science Behind Cultivated Meat

Introduction: Rethinking the Future of Meat

Imagine enjoying a beef burger without the meat ever coming from a traditionally raised and slaughtered animal. Instead, the meat is produced by growing animal cells in a controlled laboratory environment.

This is no longer simply a concept from science fiction. It is an emerging food biotechnology known as cultivated meat, also referred to as cultured meat, cell-based meat or lab-grown meat. As global food systems face increasing pressure from population growth, resource limitations, environmental concerns and changing dietary demands, scientists are exploring alternative approaches to producing animal protein. Cultivated meat is one of these approaches, using principles from cell biology, tissue engineering and bioprocess technology to produce meat outside an animal's body (Kim, 2025; Zão et al., 2026).

Unlike plant-based meat alternatives, which use ingredients such as soy, peas and other plant proteins to imitate meat, cultivated meat is produced from actual animal cells. Its objective is to reproduce important characteristics of conventional meat, including muscle structure, fat composition, texture and nutritional properties.

But how exactly can scientists turn a small sample of animal cells into something resembling a burger? And could this technology genuinely transform the future of food?

What Exactly Is Cultivated Meat?

Cultivated meat is animal-derived meat produced through the controlled cultivation of animal cells outside the animal.

The process begins with obtaining a small sample of animal tissue, often through a biopsy. Scientists then isolate suitable cells, such as muscle satellite cells or other cell populations capable of multiplying and developing into muscle and fat tissues. These cells are subsequently expanded under carefully controlled conditions to generate sufficient biomass for food production.

An important distinction is that cultivated meat is not the same as plant-based meat. Plant-based products are formulated from plant ingredients, whereas cultivated meat originates from animal cells.

It is also different from traditional fermentation-based protein production, where microorganisms such as yeast or bacteria are used to manufacture specific proteins.

Cultivated meat instead relies on animal cell culture and tissue engineering technologies (Kim, 2025; Wang et al., 2025).

How Is Meat Actually Grown in a Laboratory?

The science behind cultivated meat involves several interconnected stages. These include cell sourcing, cell isolation, cell proliferation, differentiation, tissue development and harvesting.

Step 1: Collecting Animal Cells

The process begins with collecting a small tissue sample from an animal. Scientists isolate suitable cells from this sample. Depending on the production strategy, these may include muscle satellite cells, stem cells or other cell populations with the ability to proliferate and develop into relevant tissue types.

Muscle satellite cells are particularly important because they are naturally involved in muscle growth and regeneration. The selected cells are then characterised and evaluated for their ability to multiply, maintain stability and differentiate into the desired cell types.

Establishing reliable cell lines or cell banks is an important part of developing a consistent production system (Kim, 2025; Gu et al., 2025).

Step 2: Growing Cells in a Nutrient-Rich Medium

Once suitable cells have been isolated, they are transferred into a culture environment containing a nutrient-rich growth medium.

This medium provides the essential components needed for cellular growth and multiplication.

Depending on the formulation, these components may include:

• Amino acids for protein synthesis.

• Glucose and other energy sources.

• Vitamins and essential minerals.

• Salts to maintain appropriate cellular conditions.

• Growth factors and signalling molecules that support cell proliferation.

  
  

The composition of the culture medium is particularly important because cells require specific nutritional and biochemical conditions to survive and multiply. Historically, some cell culture systems have relied on fetal bovine serum (FBS). However, using animal-derived serum creates ethical, economic and manufacturing challenges.

Consequently, researchers are investigating serum-free and chemically defined culture media that can support cell growth while improving consistency and reducing dependence on animal-derived inputs (Gu et al., 2025; Kim, 2025).

Step 3: Scaling Up Using Bioreactors

Growing a small number of cells in a laboratory flask is very different from producing enough cells to manufacture food commercially. This is where bioreactors become essential. Bioreactors are specialised vessels designed to provide controlled conditions for large-scale cell cultivation. They allow scientists and bioprocess engineers to monitor and regulate important parameters, including:

• Temperature.

• pH.

• Dissolved oxygen.

• Nutrient availability.

• Mixing and fluid movement.

• Waste-product accumulation.

  
  

As the cells multiply, the production system must maintain suitable environmental conditions to support cell growth. However, scaling up is not as simple as using a larger container. Larger systems introduce challenges involving oxygen transfer, nutrient distribution, mixing, shear stress and contamination control.

These factors can affect cellular growth, productivity and the consistency of the final product (Wang et al., 2025; Gu et al., 2025).

Step 4: Encouraging Cells to Form Muscle and Fat

Producing large quantities of cells is only part of the process. To create meat with characteristics resembling conventional animal tissue, scientists must also encourage cells to develop into the appropriate specialised cell types.

This process is known as cell differentiation.

For example, muscle cells can be encouraged to differentiate and form muscle fibres, while suitable precursor cells can develop into fat cells. The combination of muscle and fat is important because fat contributes to the flavour, juiciness and texture associated with conventional meat. Scientists are also investigating scaffolds and biomaterials that provide structural support for developing tissues.

These scaffolds can help cells attach, organise and develop into more structured tissue formations. Their properties, including biocompatibility, porosity and mechanical strength, influence how successfully the cells grow. Developing structured tissues remains a major challenge, particularly when attempting to reproduce the complex architecture of whole cuts of meat such as steak (Kim, 2025; Wang et al., 2025).

Step 5: Harvesting and Processing the Meat

Once sufficient cellular biomass or tissue has developed, it can be harvested and processed into food products. Depending on the production method, cultivated cells may be combined with other food ingredients to achieve the desired texture, structure and sensory characteristics. For example, less structurally complex products such as minced meat, burgers, nuggets and sausages may be easier to develop than highly structured whole-cut products. The final product must also undergo appropriate food-safety assessments and quality controls before it can be offered to consumers.

In other words, producing cells is not enough. Scientists must ensure that the resulting food is safe, consistent, nutritious and acceptable to consumers.

Why Is Cultivated Meat Generating So Much Attention?

Cultivated meat has attracted attention because it offers an alternative approach to producing animal protein. However, its potential benefits should be considered alongside the scientific and practical limitations.

A. Potential Benefits for Animal Welfare

One of the most frequently discussed motivations behind cultivated meat is animal welfare.

Traditional meat production generally involves raising animals for food, whereas cultivated meat production can generate edible animal tissue from a comparatively small initial cell sample.

This could potentially reduce the number of animals required for meat production.

Nevertheless, animal welfare considerations do not disappear completely. Some cell sourcing procedures and animal-derived culture ingredients may still involve animals. The extent of these impacts depends on the production system.

B. Potential Environmental Benefits

Conventional livestock production is associated with land use, feed production, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Cultivated meat could potentially reduce certain environmental pressures by changing how animal protein is produced. However, it would be misleading to assume that laboratory-grown meat is automatically more environmentally friendly.

Cultivated meat production requires energy to operate bioreactors, maintain controlled temperatures, supply oxygen and manufacture specialised culture media. A life-cycle assessment by Risner et al. (2025) examined the environmental impacts of cultured meat production and highlighted the importance of energy requirements and manufacturing conditions when evaluating its environmental performance.

Similarly, Tavana et al. (2025) questioned some of the broader sustainability claims surrounding cultivated meat, emphasising that its environmental advantages depend heavily on production efficiency and the energy sources used.

Therefore, the environmental benefits are not guaranteed. They depend on how efficiently cultivated meat is manufactured and whether production facilities can operate using lower-carbon energy.

C. Supporting Future Food Production

Cultivated meat could contribute to diversifying the methods used to produce animal protein. Rather than depending entirely on conventional livestock systems, food production could potentially incorporate controlled cell cultivation alongside existing agricultural practices. This could provide additional opportunities for food innovation, biotechnology investment and the development of alternative protein industries.

However, cultivated meat should be viewed as a potential complement to existing food systems rather than an immediate replacement for conventional agriculture.

What Are the Biggest Scientific and Technological Challenges?

Despite its exciting potential, cultivated meat is still developing as an industrial technology.

Several challenges must be addressed before large-scale production becomes economically and technically practical.

A. High Production Costs

Producing cultivated meat requires specialised equipment, carefully formulated culture media, controlled manufacturing environments and extensive quality monitoring. Growth factors and other specialised medium components can contribute significantly to production costs. Researchers are therefore investigating more affordable culture media, improved cell lines and more efficient manufacturing processes.

Gu et al. (2025) identify cell-line development, serum-free media, scaffold engineering and bioreactor design as four major technological areas requiring further improvement.

B. Scaling Up Manufacturing

Producing a small quantity of cultivated meat in a laboratory does not demonstrate that the same process can be reproduced economically at industrial scale. Large-scale production requires reliable cell growth, effective oxygen transfer, appropriate mixing and consistent environmental control. Maintaining these conditions becomes increasingly complex as bioreactor volumes increase. Achieving consistent product quality across different production batches is another important challenge (Wang et al., 2025).

C. Reproducing the Texture and Structure of Meat

Conventional meat consists of organised muscle fibres, connective tissues, fat and other structural components. Reproducing these features using cultivated cells requires more than simply growing muscle cells.

Scientists must develop suitable scaffolds, tissue structures and differentiation strategies to reproduce the texture and sensory characteristics of different meat products. This is particularly challenging for whole-cut products compared with simpler minced or blended products (Kim, 2025).

D. Food Safety and Quality Control

As with any emerging food technology, safety must remain a priority. Potential hazards associated with cell-based food production include microbial contamination, chemical residues, unintended components from culture media, and issues relating to cell identity and stability.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) published a comprehensive report in 2023 examining food-safety considerations associated with cell-based foods. Their report highlights the importance of assessing hazards throughout the production process, from cell sourcing and cultivation to harvesting and final food processing (FAO & WHO, 2023).

Therefore, cultivated meat must undergo appropriate safety evaluations rather than being assumed safe simply because it is produced in a controlled laboratory environment.

Is Cultivated Meat Already Approved for Human Consumption?

Surprisingly, yes. Cultivated meat has already moved beyond the research laboratory in certain countries. Singapore became the first country to authorise the sale of cultivated meat in 2020, following a food-safety assessment of cultivated chicken produced by GOOD Meat (Singapore Food Agency, n.d.). The United States has also made progress in regulating this technology. In November 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed its first pre-market consultation for human food made using animal cell culture technology, involving UPSIDE Foods.

In March 2023, the FDA completed a second pre-market consultation involving GOOD Meat.

Importantly, the FDA clarified that its pre-market consultation is not itself a formal approval process. The agency had no further questions at the time about the companies' respective safety conclusions. Other applicable federal requirements, including USDA oversight, must also be met before relevant products can enter the US market (FDA, 2022, 2023). By 2025, the FDA had also completed consultations involving cultured salmon, pork fat and additional cultured chicken materials (FDA, 2025).

These developments demonstrate that cultivated meat is progressing from experimental research towards regulated food production. However, regulatory approval in one country does not automatically permit the sale of cultivated meat in another. Each jurisdiction has its own food-safety requirements and regulatory procedures.

What About Consumer Acceptance? Would People Actually Eat It?

Even if scientists successfully develop safe and affordable cultivated meat, there is another important question:

Will consumers be willing to eat it?

Food acceptance is influenced by more than nutritional composition or scientific innovation. People's perceptions of naturalness, familiarity, food safety, ethics, price and taste can influence their willingness to try new food products. Pakseresht et al. (2022) identified perceived naturalness, awareness and food-related risk perception as important factors influencing consumer acceptance of cultivated meat.

A further systematic review by Hanan et al. (2024) identified factors such as consumer attitudes, information, familiarity, perceived risks and benefits, and product characteristics as important influences on acceptance. Interestingly, this is also a relevant discussion for Malaysia. Research involving Malaysian academics has contributed to the international discussion surrounding consumer perceptions and acceptance of cultivated meat. For example, Hanan et al. (2024) included an author affiliated with Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam.

This highlights the importance of examining consumer awareness and attitudes within different cultural and geographical settings rather than assuming that acceptance will be the same worldwide. For Malaysia, questions surrounding food preferences, cultural expectations, affordability, food safety and regulatory requirements will be important considerations as cultivated meat technology develops.

Ultimately, consumers will need transparent information about how the products are produced, what ingredients they contain and how their safety is evaluated.

What Does the Future Hold for Cultivated Meat?

The future of cultivated meat will depend on continued developments in biotechnology, tissue engineering, food science and bioprocess manufacturing. Researchers are working to improve cell growth, develop more affordable culture media, optimise bioreactor systems and produce more structured tissues.

There is also growing interest in combining cultivated meat with other food ingredients to create hybrid products that may be more practical to manufacture. Nevertheless, substantial research and development are still required before cultivated meat can become a widely accessible and economically competitive food source.

The technology should not be viewed as a guaranteed solution to global food insecurity or environmental challenges. Instead, it represents one of several emerging innovations that could contribute to a more diverse food-production system. Its long-term success will depend on whether scientists and manufacturers can balance production efficiency, food safety, nutritional quality, affordability, sustainability and public acceptance.

Conclusion: Could Your Next Burger Really Come From a Laboratory?

Cultivated meat demonstrates how biotechnology can extend beyond medicine and pharmaceutical research into the food industry. By combining animal cell culture, stem cell biology, tissue engineering and bioprocess technology, scientists are exploring a completely different approach to producing meat.

Although major challenges remain, developments in cell cultivation and food manufacturing suggest that this technology deserves continued scientific investigation.

Perhaps the next major innovation in biotechnology will not only change how we treat diseases or develop medicines, but also how we produce the food on our plates.

So, the next time you order a burger, consider this:

Would you take a bite of meat grown from animal cells in a laboratory?

The future of food may be closer than we think.

References (APA 7th Edition)

The following sources are from 2020–2026 and include peer-reviewed reviews, original research and official regulatory publications.

1. Gu, H., Kong, Y., Huang, D., Wang, Y., Raghavan, V., & Wang, J. (2025). Scaling cultured meat: Challenges and solutions for affordable mass production. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 24(4), e70221. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.70221

2. Hanan, F. A., Ab Karim, S., Ab Aziz, Y., Che Ishak, F. A., & Sumarjan, N. (2024). Consumer's cultured meat perception and acceptance determinants: A systematic review and future research agenda. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 48(5), e13088. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.13088

3. Kim, S. (2025). Cultured meat: Advances in stem cell biology, tissue engineering, and bioprocess optimisation for scalable and sustainable production—a review. International Journal of Food Science & Technology, 60(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/ijfood/vvaf220

4. Pakseresht, A., Ahmadi Kaliji, S., & Canavari, M. (2022). Review of factors affecting consumer acceptance of cultured meat. Appetite, 170, 105829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105829

5. Risner, D., Negulescu, P., Kim, Y., Nguyen, C., Siegel, J. B., & Spang, E. S. (2025). Environmental impacts of cultured meat: A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment. ACS Food Science & Technology, 5(1), 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.4c00281

6. Tavana, M., Smith, N. W., McNabb, W. C., & Wood, P. (2025). Reassessing the sustainability promise of cultured meat: A critical review with new data perspectives. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 65(30), 7201–7209. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2025.2461262

7. Wang, Y., Tong, X., Niu, J., Chen, X., Zheng, W., et al. (2025). The key technologies and main challenges for the engineering production of animal cell meat cultured in bioreactors. Food Production, Processing and Nutrition, 7, 57. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43014-025-00327-y

8. Zão, A. C. A. F., Nogueira, W. V., Rondan, F. S., & Scaglioni, P. T. (2026). Cultured meat: A multidimensional review of technological, nutritional, ethical, and regulatory advances (2020–2025). Journal of Food Science, 91(2), e70915. https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.70915

9. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations & World Health Organization. (2023). Food safety aspects of cell-based food. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc4855en

10. Singapore Food Agency. (n.d.). Safety of alternative protein. https://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-safety-tips/food-risk-concerns/risk-at-a-glance/safety-of-alternative-protein

11. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2022, November 16). FDA completes first pre-market consultation for human food made using animal cell culture technology. https://www.fda.gov/food/cfsan-constituent-updates/fda-completes-first-pre-market-consultation-human-food-made-using-animal-cell-culture-technology

12. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2023, March 21). FDA completes second pre-market consultation for human food made using animal cell culture technology. https://www.fda.gov/food/hfp-constituent-updates/fda-completes-second-pre-market-consultation-human-food-made-using-animal-cell-culture-technology

13. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2025). Human food made with cultured animal cells inventory. https://www.hfpappexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm?set=AnimalCellCultureFoods