Lab grown meat

One of the challenges of creating lab-grown meat involves giving it a texture like that of the real thing. A new cell culture scaffold could help, as it's reportedly inexpensive, edible, and made of plant-based substances.

In the past two years, Israel's Steakholder Foods has brought us a lab-grown steak and lab-grown Wagyu beef morsels. Now, it has produced what it says are the world's first whole fillets of cultivated fish … grouper, to be precise.

Cultivated meat is shaping up as a viable alternative to traditional meat production. However, it’s missing one element crucial to flavor: fat. Now researchers have developed a way of creating fat with a texture and make-up similar to animal fat.

Although great strides are being made in the field of lab-grown meat, the stuff is still quite expensive to produce. A new 3D-printing ink could help, while also making use of agricultural waste that would otherwise be discarded.

Israeli cultured meat outfit Believer Meats, known formerly as Future Meat, is looking to play a pivotal role in the availability of lab-grown meat products, and a new facility under construction in the US should help these efforts along.

The FDA has given California company Upside Foods the green light for its lab-grown chicken, paving the way for it to reach market shelves next year, and making the US the second country in the world to allow legal sales of lab-grown meat products.

Although Wagyu beef is renowned for its rich marbling, it does still come from slaughtered cattle – a fact that doesn't sit well with many people. Steakholder Foods is developing an alternative, in the form of its 3D-printed Omakase Beef Morsels.

Microalgae is already being used as a fish-free alternative to the fish feed commonly used in aquaculture operations. Taking things a step further, scientists are now looking at using the plant-like organisms to replace the prawns eaten by humans.

In a typical poultry processing facility, much of the waste is simply dumped in a landfill or burned. Two new processes, however, make use of the feathers, blood and bones – plus one of them may ironically reduce the number of chickens slaughtered.

Making inroads in the world of lab-grown meats is Israeli startup Future Meats, which has just received the largest investment ever seen in the cultured meat industry and is rapidly reducing the production costs of its cultured chicken.

Earlier this year, we heard how two separate groups had developed the world's first lab-grown rib-eye steak and Waygu beef. Israeli startup MeaTech 3D is now joining their ranks, with a "cultivated steak" of its own.

McDonald's is preparing to bring a plant-based burger co-developed with Beyond Meat stateside for a trial run in a handful of restaurants, promising the "iconic" taste of a McDonald's burger with all the trimmings.