Cultivated meat—also known as cell-cultured or lab-grown meat—has moved from speculative concept to regulatory-approved reality in 2026, with multiple companies now authorized to sell products made from animal cells grown in bioreactors rather than raised on farms. In the United States, UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat became the first firms to receive FDA safety clearance and USDA approval to sell cultivated chicken in 2023, and by 2025 Believer Meats, an Israeli company, achieved what analysts describe as the most significant regulatory breakthrough to date. According to reporting compiled by food industry outlets and FDA announcements, Believer Meats received FDA clearance in July 2025 and completed USDA approval in October 2025, making it the first foreign cultivated meat firm cleared in the US and the fifth overall to gain FDA green lights. Its North Carolina facility, spanning 200,000 square feet, is described as the world’s largest cultivated meat plant, capable of producing 12,000 tonnes of cultivated chicken annually—roughly 26 million pounds per year.
These milestones come on top of earlier approvals in Singapore, which in 2020 became the first country to authorize cultivated meat sales, and subsequent progress in Australia, where regulators have cleared additional products and companies. By late 2025, at least seven companies had received regulatory approvals across Singapore, the United States, and Australia, including UPSIDE Foods, GOOD Meat, Vow, Wildtype, Mission Barns, Believer Meats, and Parima, with products ranging from cultivated chicken and quail to salmon and pork fat. As of 2026, cultivated meat remains a tiny fraction of the global protein market, but the movement from grams in labs to tens of thousands of tonnes in industrial facilities signals that cellular agriculture is entering a new phase where questions of cost, sustainability, and consumer acceptance move from theory to practice.
How Cultivated Meat Works
Cultivated meat is produced by taking a small sample of animal cells—often stem cells or progenitor cells—from a live animal or a cell bank, then expanding and differentiating those cells in controlled bioreactors that provide warmth, nutrients, and growth factors. Instead of raising and slaughtering whole animals, companies grow only the desired cell types, such as muscle and fat, in a process that resembles brewery fermentation more than traditional livestock farming. The end goal is to produce meat that is biologically identical or very close to conventional meat in composition and sensory experience, but with far less land, water, and potentially lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The basic process starts with establishing a stable cell line that can proliferate reliably and differentiate into target tissues. Cells are then grown in growth media containing amino acids, sugars, vitamins, salts, and growth factors, inside bioreactors that maintain optimal temperature, pH, and oxygen levels. For structured products such as chicken breast or steak, cells may be seeded onto scaffolds—edible or biodegradable structures that give the tissue shape and texture. For unstructured products such as nuggets, patties, or dumpling fillings, cells can be harvested and mixed with plant-based ingredients to achieve the desired form and mouthfeel.
From a technological standpoint, cultivated meat draws on tools from tissue engineering, biopharmaceutical manufacturing, and food science. The key challenges involve scaling cell culture processes from milliliter-scale flasks to thousands-of-liter bioreactors, replacing expensive pharmaceutical-grade inputs with food-grade, cost-effective alternatives, and ensuring that products meet food safety, taste, and nutritional expectations at a price consumers are willing to pay.
Regulatory Milestones: FDA, USDA, Singapore, and Beyond
Regulatory approval for cultivated meat involves multiple agencies and steps. In the United States, the FDA oversees the safety of the production process, cell lines, and ingredients, while the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for facility inspections, product labeling, and marks of inspection for meat and poultry products. According to FDA explainer pages on human food made with cultured animal cells, the agency conducts pre-market consultations evaluating production processes, cell lines, manufacturing controls, and all inputs before issuing a "no questions" letter that indicates it has no further safety questions. Manufacturers must then secure a USDA-FSIS inspection grant for their facilities and product labels before commercial sales can begin.
UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat completed this dual process first, receiving FDA safety clearance in November 2022 and March 2023 respectively, and USDA approvals in mid-2023 to sell cultivated chicken in the US. In 2025, Believer Meats followed, with FDA clearance in July and USDA approval in October, as detailed by FoodNavigator-USA and Protein Production Technology. This milestone allows Believer to operate its North Carolina facility under FSIS inspection and sell cultivated chicken in the US market, including exports.
Singapore led the world in 2020 by authorizing GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken for sale in restaurants, positioning itself as a regulatory pioneer in cellular agriculture. Australia and other jurisdictions have since issued their own approvals for specific products, with companies like Vow and Parima receiving clearance to sell cultivated quail and chicken products. These global approvals contribute to a patchwork regulatory landscape where cultivated meat is legal in a handful of countries, limited to pilot offerings and premium venues in many cases, but clearly moving forward rather than remaining in regulatory limbo.
Believer Meats and the World’s Largest Cultivated Meat Factory
Believer Meats’ facility in Wilson County, North Carolina represents a major step toward industrial-scale cultivated meat production. At 200,000 square feet, it is billed as the largest cultivated meat factory in the world, designed to produce 12,000 tonnes of cultivated chicken annually once fully ramped. According to coverage from Food Safety News and Believer’s own statements reported in trade press, the company uses a proprietary combination of perfusion bioreactors, centrifuge-based perfusion, and a closed-loop media rejuvenation system that recycles key inputs to cut costs and reduce waste.
Believer Meats claims it can currently produce cultivated chicken at around $6.20 per pound, a significant reduction compared to the tens or hundreds of dollars per pound that early lab-scale processes cost, but still above many conventional chicken prices in mass markets. The company aims to drive costs down further through process optimization, economies of scale, and improvements in growth media and bioreactor design. If successful, the Wilson County plant could serve as a template for additional facilities globally, demonstrating that cultivated meat can be produced at industrial scale rather than only in small pilot plants.
The Cost Challenge: Growth Media and Bioreactors
Despite progress, cost remains the central obstacle for cultivated meat. According to analysis in Chemical & Engineering News, growth media—the nutrient-rich solution that feeds cells—has historically been the most expensive component, especially when using pharmaceutical-grade reagents and animal-derived growth factors such as fetal bovine serum. Over the past five years, companies have significantly reduced media costs by developing serum-free formulations, producing growth factors recombinantly at lower cost, and reclaiming and reusing components through media rejuvenation systems. However, media still represents a substantial share of production costs, and further reductions are needed for cultivated meat to compete with conventional meat on price without subsidies or premium positioning.
Bioreactors pose another challenge. Scaling from small lab reactors to thousands-of-liter industrial vessels involves engineering and biological hurdles: ensuring adequate oxygen transfer, mixing, cell viability, and consistent product quality across large volumes. High-density perfusion systems can increase productivity but require complex control systems and cleaning protocols. Companies are experimenting with different reactor designs, from stirred-tank bioreactors borrowed from biopharma to novel reactor geometries and scaffold-based systems for structured meat. Each design choice affects capital expenditures, operating costs, and scalability.
Economies of scale at facilities like Believer’s North Carolina plant are expected to drive down both capex and opex per unit of product, but it will take years of operation to validate assumptions about utilization, maintenance, and yield. Until then, cultivated meat will likely occupy premium or niche segments where consumers are willing to pay more for novelty, animal welfare, or environmental reasons, while conventional and plant-based meats dominate on price.
Sustainability and Land Use: Promise vs Reality
Proponents of cultivated meat argue that it could dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of meat production by decoupling it from land-intensive livestock farming. In principle, replacing feed crops and grazing land with compact bioreactors could free up land for rewilding, carbon sequestration, or other uses, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and pollution. Early life-cycle assessments (LCAs) suggested that cultivated meat could have lower greenhouse gas emissions and land use than conventional beef, especially if powered by renewable energy.
More recent analyses have introduced nuance. Cultivated meat production is energy-intensive, particularly if bioreactors operate continuously and require tight environmental control. If the electricity and heat used come from fossil fuels, the climate benefits can erode or even reverse. The overall impact depends heavily on the energy mix, process efficiency, and product type (e.g., beef vs chicken). Water and land use can still be lower than conventional livestock, but the picture is not as simple as "lab meat is always better." Researchers and advocacy groups such as the Good Food Institute have called for transparent, peer-reviewed LCAs that incorporate real-world data from commercial plants rather than theoretical models.
Even with these caveats, cultivated meat has clear potential to reduce some environmental and animal welfare harms associated with intensive livestock production, particularly for products like foie gras or veal where ethical concerns are high. The key question is whether those benefits can be achieved at scale and at a cost and energy footprint that compares favorably to improved conventional and plant-based systems.
Consumer Acceptance, Labeling, and Perception
Consumer acceptance is another critical factor for cultivated meat. Surveys by industry groups and academic researchers suggest that many consumers are curious about trying cultivated meat, especially younger and urban demographics, but concerns remain about safety, "unnaturalness", and taste. Early restaurant launches in Singapore and limited offerings in U.S. fine-dining venues have focused on storytelling and transparency, letting diners see how products are made and emphasizing food safety and animal welfare benefits.
Labeling debates have emerged as regulators, companies, and traditional meat industry groups argue over terms like "meat," "cell-cultured," "lab-grown," or "cultivated." In the U.S., the USDA has signaled support for labels such as "cell-cultured chicken" to distinguish products from conventional meat while acknowledging their animal origin. The way cultivated meat is presented—name, marketing, and context—will influence how quickly it moves from novelty to normalized option in supermarkets and restaurants.
Price will ultimately be a major driver of acceptance. If cultivated meat remains significantly more expensive than conventional options, it may remain a niche product for affluent consumers or specialty dishes. If costs come down to parity or near-parity, especially when factoring in carbon pricing or environmental regulations, cultivated meat could compete more directly with traditional meat on mainstream shelves.
Competition and Complementarity with Plant-Based Meat
Cultivated meat enters a market already reshaped by plant-based meat alternatives from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Plant-based products mimic the taste and texture of meat using plant proteins, fats, and flavorings, and they have achieved significant retail presence and consumer awareness. In some cases, cultivated meat producers are pursuing hybrid products that combine cell-based ingredients with plant-based components to achieve better texture, cost, or nutrition.
Rather than purely competing, cultivated and plant-based meats may be complementary parts of a broader alternative protein portfolio. Plant-based options can scale quickly and use existing food manufacturing infrastructure, while cultivated meat aims to deliver closer biological equivalence to conventional meat, appealing to different consumer segments or use cases. The success of both will depend on taste, price, convenience, and how well they integrate into existing culinary practices and supply chains.
