Meat can be made outside of the animal. Such meat could come from vats and plants rather than slaughtered animals. There is research going on for plant-based alternatives to meat and milk. There are attempts to grow cell-based chicken in vats.

The first ever prototype of cultured meat in the form of a hamburger was very expensive. They have also produced the first cell-based meatball, and cell-based shrimp, crab and lobster. There are cell-grown beef steak. The toughest challenge is to get the alternative taste like the real thing.

Scientists of synthetic biology and tissue culture work in this field. There are experiments to produce sheep and goat meat.

To produce cultured meat muscle stem cells are isolated from the animal without killing it. They are introduced in liquid medium. They are allowed to mature until there is enough density of cells to make a solid mass. They are fed a combination of nutrients including vitamins, amino acids and fatty acids. Researchers would like to mimic scaffolds that will hold the cells together. The culture medium used is serum drawn from foetal calves or horses. They would like to replace this by a plant-based culture medium.

There is a need for cellular agriculture. It requires lesser water.

It is to be seen how the lab model could be scaled up. It is to be seen how the lab model could be scaled up. It may require large bio-reactors and not vats and flasks.