Babbage: The promise of lab-grown meat

Meat and dairy production accounts for around 12% of humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Cultivating animal cells in a lab to produce meat products, rather than slaughtering animals, could be a way to reduce both the ethical and environmental burden of agriculture. In 2023 America's food regulator approved the first cultivated meat products—made by two companies—for public consumption. But there are both cost and technological challenges to overcome before cultivated meat can be made at the scale required.

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Guy Scriven, The Economist’s US technology editor; Sophia Bou-Ghannam and Josh Tetrick of Eat Just; Amy Chen and Zach Tyndall of Upside Foods; and Mark Post, a professor of tissue engineering at Maastricht University and the co-founder of Mosa Meat.

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