Cultivated (cell-based) meat grows muscle tissue from animal cells without slaughter. If commercially successful, it has the potential to dramatically reduce animal welfare costs in food production - but technical and regulatory challenges remain.
Cultivated meat represents a potential inflection point for animal welfare: if successful at scale, it could eliminate the welfare harms of slaughter for meat production while retaining meat in human diets. The welfare potential is enormous - commercial livestock production accounts for the majority of farmed animal welfare concern, and cultivated meat addresses this at source. Challenges include eliminating animal-derived cell culture media (FBS), ensuring cell line establishment causes minimal animal harm, and achieving consumer acceptance. The welfare case for supporting cultivated meat development is strong: even partial market penetration would reduce the number of animals in welfare-compromising production systems.