Within the next few weeks, a handful of Australian restaurants will begin serving meat grown at a factory in inner-city Sydney. That’s right: real, living animal cells propagated in stainless steel tanks, rather than inside a walking, eating creature.
Sounds like sci-fi, right? It very much isn’t.
Research into “cultivated”, “cultured” or “cell-based” meat began almost 60 years ago, though the idea itself is at least 30 years older. American biologist Ross Granville Harrison pre-empted the field when he successfully grew tadpole nerve cells in vitro (“in glass”) in 1907. Artery specialist Russell Ross, also American, followed up with cultured guinea pig aorta cells in 1971.
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By the early 2000s, Nasa was experimenting with cultured cells to sustain future astronauts on long space flights, and two Harvard students were growing a frog “steak” to poke fun at the French.
But the real watershed moment came in 2013, when, after two years and US$325,000, Dutch scientist Dr Mark Post created the world’s first cultured beef burger – an expensive proof of concept never intended for mass production. His backer was none other than Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who “basically shares the same concerns about the sustainability of meat production and animal welfare,” Post told the New York Times.
Who makes cultured meat in Australia?
There are thought to be at least 150 companies around the world working on scaling the technology, including two in Australia.
Vow, founded in Sydney in 2019, has been selling cultured Japanese quail parfait and foie gras to Singaporean restaurants for more than a year and this week received approval to retail three products in Australia – the first company to do so here (and just the fourth globally).
Vow products will soon appear on menus at Kitchen by Mike, The Waratah and Nel in Sydney and From Here by Mike, Hotel Lincoln and Bottarga in Melbourne, with “20 to 30” more restaurants in the pipeline.
Magic Valley, a smaller company started in Melbourne in 2020, is focused on bringing cultured lamb to market.
Is cultured meat the same as “plant-based meat” like the Impossible Burger?
No. The Impossible Burger is a high-tech veggie burger made entirely from plants. As the term implies, all “plant-based meat” is made from non-meat products. Cultured meat is made from real animal cells.
Is cultured meat “lab-grown”?
Not really. Many media outlets have been using the term “lab-grown” to sensationalise the technology, but cultured meat is made in a factory, much like beer or yoghurt.
How is cultured meat made?
At Vow, a small biopsy, about the size of an almond, is taken from an animal. This only needs to happen once. From a single sample, the company can produce an unlimited amount of meat.
The cells are transferred to a “bioreactor” – a conical stainless steel tank like those found in breweries – and grown over the course of about three months in a body-temperature liquid containing sugars, amino acids, proteins, fats, vitamins and growth factors. Some cultured meat companies have been criticised for using fetal bovine serum (derived from cow foetuses) in their liquid medium, but Vow’s nutrient broth contains no animal products.
As the cells divide and multiply, they draw nutrients from the liquid to continue growing. Critical gasses like oxygen and nitrogen are bubbled through the mixture. This mimics an animal’s circulatory system, where air and food are broken down and sent around the body to nourish cells. The cells emerge from the bioreactor looking like gelatinous chicken breast, without much structure.
Does cultured meat taste like real meat?
Yes, because it is real meat. But don’t expect to eat a cultured steak just yet. A cut of meat contains hundreds of different cells and non-cells arranged in a complex matrix. Cells can also exist in different phases, such as red blood cells or white blood cells.
In 2025, cultured meat mostly exists as a paste made from one or two types of animal cells and sometimes a plant-based thickener such as carageenan, derived from seaweed. Initially, it’ll show up as mousse, pate, foie gras or parfait, or as a filling for sausages, dumplings or pies.
Vow’s parfait contains cultured Japanese qual cells, butter, shallots, tapioca starch, port wine, garlic, brandy, olive oil, thyme, salt and fruit and vegetable concentrates. The foie gras is made from cultured Japanese quail, hydrogenated coconut oil, water, sunflower oil, fava bean protein, konjac, carrageenan, salt, yeast extract, potassium hydroxide, ferric ammonium citrate and fruit and vegetable concentrates.
Companies including Vow are racing to create more advanced “fillet” products that more closely mimic regular meat. There are at least four ways to do this:
1. Create a 3D scaffold with plant-based proteins, pour animal cells in and let them adhere to the structure.
2. Use gelatinous additives like alginate and calcium chloride to create a spongy, fibrous structure.
3. 3D bioprinting, whereby the cells are squirted out of nozzle in a 3D structure.
4. Use biology itself to induce the cells’ natural, pre-programmed growth or healing process (including forming a structure), an approach trialled by Israel’s Aleph Farms.
Is cultured meat safe to eat?
Yes. The World Health Organisation examined all potential dangers of the technology and raised no serious concerns. Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) likewise spent two and a half years assessing Vow’s submission before authorising it to sell cultured meat in Australia on June 18, 2025. The body found no significant nutritional, toxicological or allergenic dangers with Vow’s current process.
Inside the bioreactor, cells exposed to pathogens or toxic compounds die or stagnate and won’t grow into a viable product. So infection or contamination is difficult, if not impossible, during the production phase. As with conventional meat, there’s a small risk of contamination during the harvesting and packing process.
Cultured meat has already been approved for human consumption in Singapore, the USA and Israel. The UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland are tipped to follow soon. France and Italy have outright banned the production of cultured meat, not due to safety concerns but to protect traditional farming and food culture.
Is cultured meat nutritious?
Broadly, yes, in that it provides protein and other macronutrients. With fortification or other methods, it could potentially be made more nutritious. “Meat’s a really complex, nutritionally dense product [containing] multiple cell types,” professor Paul Wood, an award-winning microbiologist, told ABC News last year. “When you grow a single cell line, it’s not going to have the same levels of iron and calcium and zinc … it’s not going to have any B12. You’re going to have to add those things back. We don’t know, long-term, what the nutritional profile is going to be.”
Why bother making cultured meat?
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates livestock farming is responsible for 12 per cent of annual human greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock farming is also a major driver of deforestation globally, reducing tree cover and shrinking animal habitats. Farmed animals are also susceptible to disease, predators and natural disasters, which affects ongoing food security. Cultured meat is one possible solution to these problems, and the issue of animal suffering.
Is cultured meat more sustainable than farmed meat?
That’s still being debated. The technology is immature and companies are developing proprietary processes mostly behind closed doors, making definitive analysis of environmental impact difficult. There’s also the question of local energy grids and how they’re powered.
In 2024 a team from the University of California published a landmark life cycle assessment paper on cultured meat. “Our results indicate that cultured meat is not necessarily a less resource-intensive protein product than conventional meat and, in fact, may lead to significantly greater environmental impact if the industry is unable to fully transition from pharmaceutical-grade ingredients to food/feed-grade inputs,” the team wrote, while acknowledging a level of “model uncertainty” and “incomplete data” in its assessment. Some people in the cultured meat industry criticised the paper for making incorrect assumptions.
Why not just eat plants?
Eating plants is the best option for the environment. Yet 85 per cent of Australians still want to eat meat at least occasionally. Rather than trying to change decades of eating behaviour, cultured meat hopes to meet consumer needs while reducing animal suffering and the vast environmental damage inflicted by livestock and poultry farming.
Will cultured meat entirely replace farmed meat?
Not in the near future. Like any emerging technology, cultured meat is relatively expensive and it’ll be a while before it’s the cheaper option. There’s also the significant hurdle of convincing consumers to give it a go. A likely scenario is that cultured meat will supplement existing meat options, the way stevia and aspartame now supplement regular sugar.
Does cultured meat cause cancer?
The World Health Organisation concluded there’s no evidence cultured meat is any more or less carcinogenic than regular meat, concluding: “Empirical evidence from consumption of conventional meat that, like many animal tissues, may contain microtumours or precancerous lesions, also indicate that oral exposure to cells with enhanced proliferative capacity subsequently subjected to conventional food processing has not resulted in any reported instance of cross-species cell survival and growth. Thus, each of the steps described is at best extremely unlikely to occur, and none that requires active intervention by the manufacturer. The probability of all these events occurring concurrently is such that it was not possible to identify a credible pathway to harm.”
Where can I buy cultured meat in Australia?
Vow’s cultured Japanese quail parfait and cultured Japanese quail foie gras are on the menus at Kitchen by Mike, The Waratah and Nel in Sydney and From Here by Mike, Hotel Lincoln and Bottarga in Melbourne. The company hopes to retail directly to consumers before the end of 2025.
Are animals harmed to make cultured meat?
That depends on your definition of harm. Making a particular variety of cultured meat – whether beef, lamb, chicken or something else – requires just a single biopsy, about the size of an almond, taken from the relevant animal. The animal is no longer needed after that.
Is cultured meat suitable for vegans and vegetarians?
Technically not. Cultured meat is an animal product sourced from a real animal. But given that cultured meat limits harm to a single animal, it may be an acceptable alternative to farmed meat for people who are vegan or vegetarian solely for ethical reasons. Paul Bevan, founder of Melbourne-based cultivated meat company Magic Valley, was vegetarian for 20 years and transitioned to a full vegan diet 10 years ago. He started Magic Valley explicitly to reduce animal suffering.
Is cultured meat a processed or ultra-processed food?
That depends on your definition of those terms. Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s advises, “Processed foods are any foods that have been modified from their original fresh or whole state. Many foods we eat are processed in some way.” It classifies bread, milk, bacon, salami and tinned fruits and vegetables as processed. Ultra-processed is likewise a vague, ill-defined term.
Is cultured meat a GMO, or genetically modified organism?
Some companies may use GMO techniques. Vow currently does not.
