What is meant by cultured meat, and is cultured meat vegan?
Created on: February 5, 2026
Last edited on: February 23, 2026
Cultured meat, often also referred to as in vitro meat, artificial meat, or clean meat, has been gaining increasing attention in recent years. Could this be the way to have the taste of meat without animals having to go to the slaughterhouse for it? And does that make cultured meat vegan?
What is cultured meat?
Cultured meat is real animal muscle tissue that is cultivated from animal cells in a laboratory. In contrast, currently available vegan meat uses plant proteins and ingredients to replicate taste and texture. You can learn more about this in our PROTEIN GUIDE 💪
At the moment, lab-grown meat is only available in very few restaurants or pilot projects in selected cities, mostly in the form of test dishes. In extremely rare cases it can also be found in some supermarkets in the US.
How is in vitro meat produced?
In principle, in vitro meat is a technology in which real animal muscle tissue is no longer produced through slaughter, but through cell proliferation. The most common method of producing cultured meat works as follows: stem cells are first taken from animals. The cells are then multiplied in bioreactors, which replace the animal’s body. This also requires the use of a nutrient solution (as we will see later, this is one of the biggest problems). If everything works, the result is muscle tissue - in other words, cultured meat.
Is in vitro meat vegan?
Veganism is not about dogmatically avoiding animal products purely for its own sake. The central question is whether animal abuse takes place in the production process. At first glance, one might think that cultured meat could be vegan - after all, a single cell extraction can be used to produce several tons of meat, meaning that many animals could be spared breeding, farming, and slaughterhouses. In practice, however, it is more complicated.
Problem 1: The culture medium
In the development of in vitro meat, nutrient solutions containing fetal bovine serum (FBS) have often been used and, to this day, are still frequently used. FBS is obtained from the blood of bovine fetuses whose pregnant mother was murdered in a slaughterhouse. In most cases, the fetus also dies. Although many manufacturers are working on serum-free, synthetic, or plant-based alternatives, the transition has not yet been fully completed from a technical and economic standpoint.
Beyond FBS, there are other animal-derived components that are sometimes used in the production process. These include animal-derived growth factors, gelatin, and collagen. In addition, animal testing may occur during research and approval processes.
Problem 2: Potentially abusive animal husbandry
At present, we are (still?) not at a point where clean meat eliminates the need for further animal farming, because new cell samples must be taken repeatedly. It is currently unclear whether long-term stable cell lines can be used reliably on an industrial scale without repeated animal extractions. It is also questionable under what conditions the animals used for this purpose have to live. In addition, it is conceivable that animals would be abused in parallel for other products such as milk or eggs.
Possible future prospects
In theory, cultured meat could be vegan. This would be possible in a scenario where a cell sample is taken once and can then be multiplied indefinitely, the animal continues to live in peace afterward, and all subsequent production steps take place without animal-derived substances. This could at least plausibly be argued as vegan, because systematic animal abuse would no longer occur - only a one-time intervention comparable to a medical sample collection, which could mean the end of slaughtering.
Even if it never works out: we do not need lab-grown meat and can obtain all essential nutrients from a plant-based diet. You do not have to wait for lab-grown meat to live vegan - neither from a health perspective, and certainly not from an ethical one.
Conclusion
In theory, in vitro meat could be vegan, but in reality it is not there yet. If production were to work in the future without fetal bovine serum (and other animal-derived components), the assessment would shift significantly. It would then mainly depend on whether the cell lines could be maintained permanently without new animals, or whether new cell samples would be needed on a regular basis. As long as animals are bred and kept against their interests for their cellular material, cultured meat is not vegan. The system would still be based on animal abuse, even if fewer individuals would be affected.
We are aware that this field is currently developing rapidly, and we are keeping an eye on it for you ✅
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