It isn't real meat, and we don't know if it's safe.
Short answer: It's the same animal cells, the same muscle and fat, just grown without the animal. The FDA, USDA and Singapore have all assessed it and cleared it.
The first cultivated burger cost roughly £250,000+. The technology has moved from one-off proof of concept to a regulated, on-sale food in barely a decade.
Maastricht University (2013); Singapore Food Agency (2020); US FDA / USDA (2022–23)
The objection
“That’s not real meat, it’s a science experiment. And nobody can tell me it’s actually safe to eat.”
The answer
Two claims, and they pull in opposite directions.
On “not real meat”: cultivated meat is grown from genuine animal cells (chicken, beef, fish) that multiply into the same muscle and fat tissue they’d form inside the animal. Biologically it is meat, grown from a cell sample rather than a slaughtered body, and no plant imitation is involved. The “it’s fake” complaint also happens to be the exact reverse of the “it’s plant junk” complaint, and critics can’t have both. The one thing missing from the process is the animal’s life and death.
On safety, “we don’t know” is simply out of date. Singapore approved cultivated chicken for sale in 2020. In the US, the FDA completed its safety evaluation of UPSIDE Foods in 2022 and GOOD Meat in 2023, after years of review, and the USDA granted final label and inspection approval in June 2023. Both agencies, both required, both satisfied. Several more products have since cleared US regulators. These are among the most scrutinised foods ever brought to market, precisely because they’re new.
There is one fair caveat. It’s early, so decades of population data don’t yet exist, as with any new food. But “real meat grown a new way, cleared by the FDA, USDA and Singapore’s food agency” is a very different sentence from “untested fake meat.” The cells are the same. Only the killing is optional.