A San Francisco Bay-area food technology company served its test-tube chicken strips, grown from self-reproducing cells, to a handful of taste-testers, says the Wall Street Journal, “and the product tasted pretty much like chicken, according to people who were offered samples.” The debut of Memphis Meat was the latest advance of “clean meat.”
Other pioneers have grown beef from bovine cells but the taste test this week was the first to feature chicken. Proponent say meat grown in bioreactor tanks can be a cheaper and more humane way to meet demand for protein than growing and slaughtering tens of millions of animals a year.
“The cell-cultured meat startups are a long way from replacing the meat industry’s global network of hatcheries, chicken barns, feed mills and processing plants. But they say they’re making progress,” says the Journal. Cell-culture meat is startlingly expensive to produce at present but costs are falling.