In the US it will soon be possible to eat laboratory meat – what about Switzerland?

For the first time, lab-grown meat can be sold in the United States. The US Department of Agriculture has finally approved the two California companies Upside Foods and Good Meat to sell chicken meat grown from animal cells, the companies announced Wednesday (local time).

“This announcement that we can now produce and sell cultured meat in the United States is an important moment for our company, the industry and the food system,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Good Meat. So far, lab meat has only been approved in Singapore. “Now it’s legal for sale to consumers in the world’s largest economy,” Tetrick said.

It is the beginning of a new era, according to a statement from Upside Foods. This approval will fundamentally change the way meat gets to the table, company boss Uma Valeti said on Twitter.

You can’t buy the meat in regular supermarkets yet. According to the manufacturers, the laboratory chicken meat will initially only be available in restaurants.

Laboratory meat is not yet approved in Switzerland. However, intensive research is being done. This is also the case with the Swiss start-up Mirai Foods, which was founded in 2019 in Wädenswil in the canton of Zurich. On Feb. 14, it reported a technological breakthrough in growing thick, tender steaks.

While other meats can already be made in labs, according to Christoph Mayr, CEO and co-founder of Mirai Foods, a fillet steak poses the ultimate challenge:

Mirai Foods has registered three patents on the so-called vibration technology developed for this purpose. In addition, long, mature muscle fibers are grown in the specially built bioreactor “The Rocket”, which are then linked by enzymes and supplemented with cultured adipose tissue, the website continues. Mirai Foods only uses natural cells to grow the cells, without genetically engineering them. The process lasts five days, then the fillet is ready and can be cut into steaks.

Since 2018, Coop subsidiary Bell Food Group has also been investing in cultured beef. The Swiss meat producer is investing around 2.3 million francs in the Dutch start-up Mosa Meat, which has been working on the meat for years.

In 2020, Migros also took the plunge and invested in Israeli biotech company Aleph Farms. There, too, meat cells are grown into steaks. In addition, Migros was involved in the establishment of the Cultured Food Innovation Hub, which aims to promote the development of plant-based products and cellular agriculture.

Clean meat advocates believe that laboratory meat is the only environmentally sound way to meet the growing demand for meat that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations projects by 2050.

It will probably be some time before lab meat hits the shelves in Switzerland. According to the Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley, you probably have to wait until at least 2025. The innovation center Cultured Food Innovation Hub also expects another two to three years.

As promising as the lab meat sounds, there are still many pitfalls to be eliminated. Production is energy-intensive and expensive: the first Mosa Meat burger cost no less than 250,000 euros in 2013. However, the company estimates that the products could one day be sold for 9 euros.

Another sticking point: the basis for laboratory meat is still animal muscle tissue. For this purpose, muscle tissue is removed from an animal, from which stem cells are obtained. For the proliferation of these cells, they are placed in a so-called nutrient medium, which ensures optimal conditions. The best medium is still fetal bovine serum, which, however, cannot be obtained without animal suffering. To do this, a pregnant cow must first be slaughtered and the fetus cut from the abdomen. Then a thick needle is pushed into the heart of the still-living calf to pump out the blood. The calf dies if removed.

However, in recent years, cell meat startups have been intensively researching alternatives to fetal bovine serum. For example, Mosa Meat announced in 2019 that it would completely dispense with fetal bovine serum. In an article in the scientific journal Nature Food, it explains how it achieved this.

The bioreactor in which the muscle cells mature is responsible for the high energy consumption. In order for the stem cells to multiply, it must be kept at a constant temperature of 37 °C. Mirai Foods founder Mayr admitted to Swissinfo that making the process cheap and reproducible on a large scale is still a major challenge.