Upside Foods bills it as “the new meat,” calling it “more humane” and “future friendly.” Believer Meats says “It's the meat you know and love. Only better.” And Finless Foods, which focuses on cultivated seafood, says they are “creating a future for seafood where the ocean thrives.”
It's an emerging food science where a small number of cells are taken from living animals and grown in a controlled environment. The result: lab-grown meat for human consumption. The FDA gave its first approval for cultivated meat to Upside Foods’ chicken in 2022, joining Singapore as the second country where cultivated meat is approved for human consumption.
And these lab-grown meats likely won't be on grocery store shelves anytime soon as companies work to increase production enough to make the meats affordable to consumers.
Florida and Alabama have already banned this cultivated meat. It is unlawful to manufacture, sell, or distribute cultivated meat in either state.
Thus far, limited high-end restaurants have been the only way for consumers to try lab-grown meat for themselves. China Chilcano boasts on its website you can “experience Good Meat cultivated chicken” at its restaurant in Washington, D.C. as part of a tasting menu by pre-reservation only. Reservations for that tasting menu, as of publication of this article, were paused. Bar Crenn in San Francisco also had previously offered a tasting menu of cultivated meat, featuring Upside Foods’ chicken.
Research published by the nonprofit Good Food Institute on its website suggests that consumers are curious but hesitant to purchase cultivated meats.
About 32 percent of participants found cultured meat “very” or “somewhat” appealing when its origin was explained; 28 percent expressed likeliness to try a free sample. Even less, 17 percent, were likely to purchase it.
And terminology matters: According to a 2024 Purdue study cited in the GFI report,Consumer Snapshot: Cultivated Meat in the U.S., up to 60 percent were willing to try “cultivated chicken in a restaurant setting,” but that number dwindled when the meat was referred to as “meat grown using cells from animals” or “laboratory-grown meat.”
There's also a generational gap in willingness to try a free sample of cultivated meat with younger consumers more likely to try it than older ones. About 32 percent and 36 percent of Gen Z and Millennials, respectively, “extremely” or “very” likely to try cultured meat. Those percentages drop to 23 and 24 percent for Gen X and Boomers, respectively.
And male consumers are more likely to sample cultivated meat than women at a rate of 36 percent to 20 percent.
As for people's thoughts on the developing food science, GFI reports that “People mostly don't know what to think about cultivated meat.” When told how it's made, people don't know whether it will be better, the same or worse than conventional meat in the areas of health, sustainability, or taste.
Participants in the study were told the following to explain cultivated meat: “Cultivated meat is essentially the same as the meat we eat today, but grown directly from animal cells. Cultivated meat looks, cooks, and tastes the same as conventional meat.”
For those curious to read more on cultivated meat, the FDA has published pre-market consultations for cultivated pork, salmon, and chicken at FDA.gov.