Welfare Science

Cellular Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare

Cultivated meat - grown from animal cells without slaughter - has moved from laboratory to commercial production, with profound implications for farm animal welfare.

Key Facts

Singapore and the US have approved cultivated meat for sale
Cultivated meat production requires biopsy from donor animals but eliminates slaughter
Current cell culture media still requires foetal bovine serum in many processes
Scaling cultivated meat to cost-competitive production remains a major technical challenge

Welfare Considerations

Even with ongoing technical challenges, cultivated meat represents a path to dramatically reducing the scale of animal slaughter. Transitioning serum-free cell culture media eliminates the remaining welfare harm from the biopsy and serum extraction process.

What You Can Do

Support cultivated meat companies and research institutions working on serum-free production
Advocate for regulatory approval of cultivated meat in additional jurisdictions
Engage with the Good Food Institute's research on cellular agriculture welfare implications