Cultivated Meat: Potential to Eliminate Factory Farming

Cultivated meat — grown from animal cells without slaughtering animals — has the potential to provide meat products without the welfare costs of conventional animal agriculture, if scaled successfully.

Key Facts

The first cultivated beef burger was produced by Mark Post and colleagues at Maastricht University in 2013 at a cost of EUR 250,000.
Singapore approved cultivated chicken for commercial sale in 2020, making it the first country to authorize cultivated meat.
By 2023, cultivated meat products had been approved in Singapore and the US, though prices remained above conventional alternatives.
Cultivated meat production requires a small number of biopsies from living animals and avoids slaughter entirely.
Good Food Institute estimates that cultivated meat could reach cost parity with conventional meat within the next decade.

Welfare Considerations

Cultivated meat represents a potentially transformative technology for animal welfare by decoupling meat consumption from animal agriculture entirely. If adopted at scale, it would eliminate the factory farming welfare harms affecting billions of land animals annually. The welfare cost of production — biopsies from donor animals for cell lines — is minimal compared to conventional production. However, scaling cultivated meat faces significant technical, regulatory, and market adoption challenges. Animal welfare organizations increasingly recognize cultivated meat investment as a high-impact strategy for reducing long-term animal suffering.

What You Can Do

Support the Good Food Institute, which researches and advocates for alternative protein development.
Try cultivated meat or plant-based meat products when available.
Advocate for regulatory approval processes that facilitate responsible cultivated meat development.
Invest in or support companies developing alternative proteins if you have the means.
Follow cultivated meat development news from Good Food Institute research updates.