Jonah Nelson
May. 25, 2021
On stage in London, during the summer of 2013, Dr. Mark Post unveiled the first lab-grown hamburger. It reportedly cost 250,000 euros to produce.
Seven years later, in Rehovot, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasted meat grown in vitro at Aleph Farms, becoming the first leader to publicly do so. We don’t know how much it cost to produce. Aleph’s PR event followed Singaporean regulatory approval of Eat Just’s lab-grown chicken product, marking the first time that lab-grown meat has been approved for consumption.
Cultured meat is touted as the future of the industry, enabling the carnivores among us to have our steak and eat it too, without the associated guilt. But can it really provide an affordable, sustainable solution for all (or at least, a lot of) meat-eating humans, in the foreseeable future?