Will lab-grown meat be better for the animals we eat?

The Singapore Food Agency has approved “chicken bites” containing meat made from real chicken cells that were grown outside of a chicken’s body. Alongside similar news from Israel, the Singapore ruling is being hailed as a watershed moment for cultured meat and the broader field of cellular agriculture.

Admittedly, these bites aren’t quite what cellular agriculture’s biggest advocates might hope they would be. Some problems are decidedly practical. For example, the bites remain pricier than meat produced by farming chickens. This will be a major obstacle for consumer acceptance. But the its producer – Eat Just – is planning to increase production, bringing down the costs.

Some problems, however, are ethical. The bites are made using foetal bovine serum – a particularly gruesome slaughter byproduct widely used in biomedical research. However, this too is a problem that can be overcome. The next production line, Eat Just claims, will replace foetal bovine serum with a plant-based alternative.