In August 2013 in London the first patty grown from cow cells was fried: the project cost €250,000 (≈$330,000), and the money came from Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Its author, Professor Mark Post, said it would take “probably 10–20 years” to reach supermarket shelves 1,2 M. In November 2025 the first meatballs containing cultivated pork fat (the rest was plant protein) appeared in a US grocery store: in one shop, for one day, one pack per customer, $13.99 for 304 g 3 M.
Since 2016 cultivated meat and seafood companies have raised $3.4bn, of which $1.5bn came in a single year, the 2021 peak, and in 2025 only $73.9m (a first estimate, which GFI usually revises upwards), about 95% less 4,5 H. At the end of 2025 Believer Meats and Meatable closed 6,7 M, and at least eight US states (by our count) have banned sales or imposed a moratorium 8 M.
In our view, cultivated meat has stalled not because of taste or bans but because of production economics: one plant costs hundreds of millions of dollars – more than the whole industry now raises in a year ($73.9m in 2025) – and without such plants production cost will not fall. So by 2040 it will most likely be an ingredient – fat, pâté, pet food – rather than a steak in a supermarket.
In brief
- Scale. The world produced 373.9m tonnes of meat in 2024 9 H, and the largest cultivated-meat line (Vow) can, by GFI's estimate, produce “low hundreds of tonnes” a year 10 H.
- Money. Believer's plant cost $154m according to GFI (without equipment, according to Green Queen), at least twice the whole industry's investment in 2025 11,4 M.
- Production cost. Plant models give from $13 (CE Delft, payback in 4 years; over 30 years, $6.43) to $37 (Humbird) per kg of cell mass 12,13 M; parity with ground beef requires about $7.5 per kg (our calculation) L.
- Approvals and bans. Eight companies hold approval to sell (according to GFI's list, including the now-closed Believer) in four jurisdictions, but in Israel sales are unconfirmed; as of October 2026, as far as we know, there is no EFSA opinion on the first application in the EU (July 2024) 14,15,16 M.
- Consumers. After being told that the taste is the same, 30% of American adults would definitely or very probably try cultivated meat, but only 19% would buy it with the same certainty (Morning Consult for GFI, June 2025; stated intent, not purchases) 17 M.
- 2040. Forecasts from 2019–2021 promised 20–35% of world meat (Barclays 20%, A.T. Kearney 35%) 18,5 M, while our base case is ≈50,000 tonnes a year, about 0.01% (our calculation) L.
01 · ScaleHow much cultivated meat there is in the world: the largest line can make up to a few hundred tonnes a year, the world 374m tonnes
Cultivated meat is grown from animal cells rather than from an animal. A biopsy is taken from a live animal; the cells are multiplied in a bioreactor (a tank of growth medium), then become muscle, fat or connective tissue, are harvested and processed like mince. The cycle takes two to eight weeks 19 M; the US FDA identifies the same four stages 20 H.
In 2024 the world produced 373.9m tonnes of meat: poultry 146m tonnes, pork 125m tonnes, beef 77m tonnes 9 H. In 2023 at least 84.7bn land animals (seven main species) were slaughtered 21 H. The largest cultivated-meat line is at Vow in Sydney: a reactor of 20,000 litres (total capacity 35,000 litres); by GFI's estimate it can produce “low hundreds of tonnes” a year 10 H. In July 2026 Parima announced a run of 22,000 litres, with no independent verification 22 L.
Even the Believer Meats plant in North Carolina, with a design capacity of 10,000–12,000 tonnes a year, would be only about 0.003% of world meat 11,9 M; it never started up, and the company closed in December 2025.
Demand for meat is not falling: world meat supply per person (including waste) rose from 36.4 kg in 2000 to 45.1 kg in 2023, and in China from 44.4 to 73.5 kg 23 M; in the US it stays near 122 kg, while in the EU it is slowly declining. The OECD and FAO expect world production to reach ≈406m tonnes by 2034, 46m tonnes (13%) more than the 2022–2024 average; against the OECD's own estimate for 2024 (365m tonnes, a different base from FAOSTAT) the rise is about 11%. Poultry will provide 62% of the increase 24 H. Cultivated meat is not mentioned once in the forecast 24 H.
Climate: according to FAO's 2023 estimate, livestock farming accounts for about 12% of world greenhouse-gas emissions (previously 14.5%) 25 H. Cultivated meat beats beef (on average ≈100 kg of CO₂-equivalent per kg of meat) but not necessarily chicken (≈11 kg; averages from Poore and Nemecek as relayed by CE Delft) 26 M. CE Delft's model puts it in 2030 at ≈14 kg of CO₂-equivalent per kg on a conventional energy grid and ≈2 kg on renewable energy 27 M. A University of California, Davis preprint (2023) estimated emissions with pharmaceutical-grade growth medium at 4–25 times those of beef; this is disputed, because the result depends on the assumption about purifying the medium 28 L.
02 · PrehistoryFrom Churchill to the first burger: 80 years of an idea and €250,000 for one patty
In 1931 Winston Churchill wrote in the essay “Fifty Years Hence” that instead of growing a whole chicken for the breast or the wing, people would grow those parts themselves 29 H. Earlier still, in 1912, the French surgeon Alexis Carrel began growing a culture of chicken-heart cells and later claimed to have kept it going for more than two decades; nobody has reproduced the result, and in the 1960s Hayflick suggested that fresh cells had been added to the culture 30 M.
The Dutchman Willem van Eelen made meat from cells his life's work: in the 1990s he raised ≈$750,000 and obtained a patent 31 M. In 2002 an experiment on growing goldfish muscle tissue as food for astronauts was published 32 H. A peer-reviewed commentary on in vitro meat in Tissue Engineering in 2005 is usually cited as the first work on the subject, but it is reasoning, not an experiment 33 M; the same year the Netherlands allocated €2m to research 34 M.
The industry's public start came in 2013: Mark Post of Maastricht University grew more than 20,000 muscle fibres and made a patty of ≈140 g, fried at a press conference in London. According to one taster, the flavour was close to meat but lacked juiciness, because there was no fat 1 M. The project cost €250,000 – the budget of an experiment, not a production cost, but it is from this figure that every later “cost reduction” is counted.
03 · Chronology2013–2026: promises, boom, approvals and bans, retreat
2013–2019: promises. After Mark Post’s burger came Memphis Meats (later Upside Foods), Mosa Meat, Meatable, Aleph Farms and Future Meat. In 2016 Memphis Meats promised products “within five years”, and in 2018 the price of ordinary meat by 2021 35 H. Eat Just promised sales by the end of 2018 36 M.
2020–2022: boom. In December 2020 Singapore became the first country in the world to approve Eat Just’s cultivated chicken 37 M. In 2021 the industry raised $1.5bn, and the biggest rounds of the time were Future Meat’s ($347m) and Upside Foods’ ($400m, 2022) 4,38,39 M. David Humbird’s model (2021, commissioned by Open Philanthropy) found that cultivated meat was probably too expensive to sell as food 12 H. The CE Delft model (2021, funded by GFI) found that by 2030 it could approach the price of meat if everything went right at once 13 M.
2023–2024: approvals and bans. In June 2023 the US approved chicken from Upside and GOOD Meat 40 M, and the bans began: Italy (December 2023), Florida and Alabama (May 2024) 41,42 H. Investment in 2023 fell more than threefold (GFI estimate) 4,43 H. GOOD Meat 3 (Singapore, May 2024), the first product in a shop, contained only 3% cells 44 M.
2025–2026: retreat. Approvals multiply (Australia and New Zealand, new products in the US and Singapore) 45,46,47 M, but investment falls to $73.9m a year 4 H. Believer Meats and Meatable close 6,7 M. Bans multiply too (five more US states and a vote in Hungary in 2025, South Dakota in 2026) 8,48,49 M, and the leaders (Upside, Wildtype) look for revenue outside food 50 M.
04 · MoneyHow $1.5bn in a year became $74m: the boom rested on a few cheques and cheap money
According to GFI (the Good Food Institute), the industry raised $3.3m in 2016, $1.5bn in 2021 and $73.9m in 2025 4 H. GFI revises past years: the figure for 2021 was raised from $1.38bn to $1.5bn, while 2025 has only a first estimate 5,4 H. Green Queen gives $1.8bn for 2021, but we could not find a source for that figure 51 L. Because of GFI’s revisions, “down 95%” compares a revised peak with an unrevised trough: by GFI’s numbers the fall is 94–95%, and relative to the AgFunder peak ($989m, a different basis) it is about 93% (our calculation) 52 L.
Five deals in 2021 (Eat Just, GOOD Meat in two rounds, Future Meat, Aleph Farms and BlueNalu) brought in $974m, or 71% of the first estimate for the year; among them was Eat Just’s $200m general round F (a question of classification) 53,43 H. The $400m round raised by Upside Foods in April 2022 made up almost half of that year’s investment by GFI’s estimate 39,43 H. All ten of the largest rounds in the industry’s history fell in 2020–2022. The largest round of 2025 ($29m, Aleph Farms) is not among the 20 largest of all time 54 H, and Aleph’s valuation was reportedly cut from ≈$300m to $80–100m 55 M.
Why the money left
Interest rates. GFI explains the 2021 peak by years of near-zero and negative interest rates, and does not expect them to return any time soon 56 H. In 2023 the global venture market fell by 42% and food technology by 61% 57 H, and the number of investors in cultivated meat shrank from 204 (2022) to 111 43 H.
Competition for money. In 2025 AI took almost half of all global venture funding 58 H.
Production plants. One large plant costs hundreds of millions of dollars 11,59 M. The building for the Believer Meats plant cost $154m without equipment, at least twice the industry’s investment in 2025 ($73.9m) 4,11,60 M. CE Delft’s model plant of 10,000 tonnes a year would cost ≈$450m 59 M. According to GFI, venture capital is poorly suited to plants 56 H: it goes into fast growth, while a plant takes years to pay back.
The Believer Meats story: the approval is there, the company is not
Israel’s Future Meat raised a then-record $347m in December 2021 and announced chicken breast at $7.70 a pound 38 L. Under the name Believer Meats it built a plant in North Carolina with a capacity of 10,000–12,000 tonnes a year 11 M. On 31 October 2025 the USDA approved its labelling and plant: the fifth company with approval in the US 61 M. At the start of December it closed, having raised $387m; the builder filed a suit over ≈$34m of unpaid bills 6 M. In June 2026 Upside Foods offered $50m for the plant and withdrew the offer; there were no other qualified bids 60 M. On 19 October the receiver reported a letter of intent from an unnamed buyer 62 M.
Who closed and who is left
Closures have not stopped since 2023. New Age Eats (more than $32m) closed in March 2023, SCiFi Foods (≈$40m) in June 2024 63,52 M. In 2025 came CellRev, Upstream Foods, Believer Meats and Meatable (≈$95m), and in 2026 Berlin’s Cultimate Foods and Portugal’s Cell4Food 64,7,65 M. In January 2025 Vow cut almost a third of its staff (25 people) to last until 2027 66 M. The number of companies in GFI’s database was 174 in 2023, 155 in 2024 and 142 in 2025 (definitions differ); some of the disappearances were mergers, such as Gourmey with Vital Meat 43,67,68 H.
Many of those that remain live on money from existing investors: according to GFI, many rounds in 2025 were recapitalisations and extensions led by investors already on board 69 H. In December 2025 Mosa Meat received €15m from existing shareholders, among them the state-owned Invest-NL, and says the money will last to 2028 70 M. In the first half of 2026 the industry raised $42m (GFI preliminary data) 71 H. GFI expects 2026 to look much the same: new approvals and new closures 72 H.
Government money does not make up for private money. By GFI’s count, governments have allocated at least $2.5bn to all alternative proteins since 2021, no more than 10% of GFI’s annual target of $10.1bn 73 M. The largest programme aimed specifically at cellular agriculture is €60m in the Netherlands (2022, awarded subject to conditions) 74 H. The rest are biotechnology packages with no separate sum for cultivated meat: China’s state-owned SDIC (more than 4bn yuan, ≈$555m), Britain (£184m) and India ($1.1bn) 75,56 H. In 2025 the US cut federal research funding 76 H.
05 · Production costWhy a kilogram is still expensive: by company claims, the medium has become 99% cheaper, but the plant remains expensive
No company publishes a verified production cost per kilogram, and GFI admits in its 2026 report that reliable data on the cost of equipment and plants are lacking 77 H. So there are three kinds of numbers that must not be mixed: company claims, models of hypothetical plants and the prices of products on sale.
Claims. Memphis Meats (2017): chicken at $2,400–9,000 a pound (sources differ) 78 L. Future Meat (December 2021): $7.70 a pound for breast 38 L. Gourmey (May 2025): €7 per kg in a 5,000-litre reactor, according to an estimate by Arthur D. Little, with the model unpublished 79 L. ADL in July 2026: “low forties” euros per kg of finished product today and a path to ≈€10 by the end of the decade, without saying whether this is cost or price, or for which product 80 L.
Models. One of the strictest among those that assume an improved cell line is David Humbird’s model (2021, for Open Philanthropy): a plant of 6,800 tonnes a year yields cell mass at $37 per kg 12 H. The best-known optimistic one is CE Delft’s (2021, for GFI): a 10,000-tonne plant in 2030 yields, in the best-case scenario, $13.40 per kg (four-year payback) and $6.43 (30 years) 13 M. The peer-reviewed Believer Meats model (Nature Food, 2024) gives $6.2 per pound (≈$13.7 per kg) for a hypothetical plant 81 H; the company closed in December 2025.
Shop prices. GOOD Meat 3 in Singapore (2024): $44.7 per kg at 3% cultivated cells 44 M. Mission Barns meatballs with cultivated pork fat (share undisclosed), at a one-day sale: $46 per kg 3 M. Vow’s pâté with 40% cells in Australia: A$83 per kg 82 M. The first two are roughly three times as expensive as ground beef in the US ($14.97 per kg) 83 H; Vow’s is dearer still (≈$54 at an approximate exchange rate, our calculation) L.
The medium has become cheaper (by company claims), but that has not solved the problem
In 2020 the main obstacle was thought to be the growth medium: the standard Essential 8 cost $376.80 a litre at laboratory prices, and more than 99% of the price came from growth factors 84 H. According to GFI, the price of medium fell by more than 99% over a decade 85 M, but mostly by company claims: Believer Meats in 2024, $0.63 a litre; several companies in 2025, $0.20 or less, with no independent verification 81,85 L. Laboratory serum-free recipes, according to a 2024 review, still cost ≈$330–4,200 a litre, and the medium accounts for at least half of the variable costs 86 H.
Even if the claims of cheap medium are confirmed, production cost will run up against capital. In Humbird’s model with medium at $0.20 a litre the result is ≈$17 per kg (≈$20 with trace elements as a separate item, as in the calculator below), of which ≈$12 is capital and plant costs (our calculation) 87 L. In the CE Delft model the payback period alone (four or 30 years) changes the production cost twofold 13 M.
For parity, the shop price is taken to be roughly twice the production cost (a rule of thumb, not a measured margin; the real ceiling is probably lower). Humbird assumes this: for an affordable product the mass must cost up to $25 per kg, which means at least $50 in the shop 88 H; and according to GFI the wholesale price of meat is about half the retail price 89 M. By this rule parity with US ground beef ($14.97 per kg) requires a production cost of ≈$7.5, with chicken fillet ($9.27) ≈$4.6, and with a whole chicken ($4.55) ≈$2.3 (our calculation from BLS prices, September 2026) 83,90 L. Beef is the easiest target, but the market is growing on the back of chicken, and no model reaches its price except the “limit” scenario from the University of California, Davis (≈$2 per kg; almost all the technical problems solved at once) 91 H.
Calculator: when cultivated meat will match beef
Pick a model to start from and change the parameters. Production cost per kilogram = medium price × litres per kilogram + capital cost converted into an annual payment (rate 7.5%) and divided by plant utilisation + other costs. The shop price is production cost ×2: this is a fixed assumption (a rule of thumb, not a measured margin) and cannot be changed in the calculator. The comparison is with US retail prices for September 2026. The model parameters are our approximation, fitted to published results: Humbird ($37 per kg of cell mass) and CE Delft ($13.40 and $6.43 per kg). In the CE Delft presets the capital cost per kilogram of annual capacity is understated ($33 against $45 in the base design), and the calculator treats payback as an annuity, whereas CE Delft uses a simple payback period. So the preset results differ from the published ones by about 1%, and the intermediate slider values are not a result of the CE Delft model.
06 · TechnologyWhat is already possible and what is still in the lab: six bottlenecks and 15 developments ranked by readiness
In ten years the biology has advanced: in 2015 there were a handful of companies; in 2025 there were more than 140, with over 1,500 patents and more than 90 cell lines 92,19 M.
According to the company, Vow harvested 538 kg of quail in a single harvest from a 20,000-litre reactor (May 2025) 104 L. In early July 2026 Parima reported a run of duck cells on Vow’s 22,000-litre line, without scaffolds or growth factors, with production cost down 99% compared with earlier runs (the company does not name the baseline) 22 L. But Meatable and Britain’s CellRev (60 days of continuous culture) have closed for lack of money 7,105 M.
Levels 7–8 have been reached by products with a small or undisclosed share of cells, or with no need for structure: hybrids, fat, pâté, pet food and Wildtype’s salmon. Cheap whole cuts and a 100% cultivated product at the price of the conventional one would make cultivated meat mainstream, but they remain at levels 3–6.
07 · RulesApprovals and bans: eight companies have clearance, at least eight US states have bans
Approvals. According to FoodNavigator, as of April 2026 cultivated meat was approved in four places: Singapore, the United States, Israel, and Australia and New Zealand; we found no new ones by October 15 M. According to GFI, it can be sold in only three of them, all but Israel, where we found no start of sales 14 M. GFI names eight companies with clearance: Upside Foods, GOOD Meat, Vow, Wildtype, Mission Barns, Believer Meats, Parima (Gourmey) and Aleph Farms; according to GFI, not all of them are operating now, and Believer has closed 14,6 M. FSANZ (the regulator for Australia and New Zealand) looks faster than the others (we found no review times for Singapore): its board approved Parima’s duck in October 2026, about a year after the application (October 2025), and the ministers’ decision is still to come 106 M. Vow’s quail waited longer: according to press reports, the application dates from 2022 and the approval from March 2025 45 M. Hong Kong has no separate rules: Vow’s products have been sold there since November 2024 on the strength of the FSANZ approval (2025, according to the SCMP), after a safety assessment that took Singapore’s approval into account 107 M.
In the US the FDA safety consultation comes first, then USDA inspection and labelling. The FDA replied to Upside Foods in November 2022, to GOOD Meat 12.5 months after the application, to Mission Barns (pork fat) after 33 months, and to Wildtype (salmon) after ≈35 (the companies other than GOOD Meat are identified from GFI and press reports) 46,108,109 M.
Europe. In the EU, EFSA has nine months to give an opinion and the European Commission seven to draft a decision, after which member states vote 110 H. In January 2024 Austria, France and Italy, backed by nine more delegations, asked the European Commission to hold consultations and an impact assessment before any approval 111 M. The first application (Gourmey’s foie gras, July 2024) was expected to take at least 18 months to review, but after 27 we found neither an EFSA opinion nor an EU approval (we did not check the EFSA register) 16 M. In March 2026 the EU, in three-way negotiations, provisionally agreed to ban 31 names, such as “beef”, “chicken” or “steak”, for plant-based and cultivated products (GFI adds fermented ones too); “burger” and “sausage” remain allowed; final votes in the Council and Parliament are still to come, and the transition period is three years 112 H. In Britain the FSA’s sandbox runs from February 2025 to February 2027, with the aim of completing two risk assessments; according to a report of 18 September 2026, the dossiers are still at an early stage 113 H. We found no approvals for human consumption M; pet food has been allowed since July 2024 114 M.
Bans. Italy was the first to ban production and sale (Law 172/2023, December 2023) 41 H; the European Commission, according to a review by lawyers, considers that the law was adopted before the mandatory standstill period for TRIS notification had ended 115 M. Hungary’s parliament voted for a ban in November 2025 48 M. In the US, Florida and Alabama passed the first bans (2024); Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, called his law a response to a plan by the “global elite” to force people to eat cultivated meat, although there was no cultivated meat on US shelves at the time 42,8,116 M. In 2025 bans or moratoriums were introduced by Mississippi, Indiana, Nebraska, Montana and Texas, and in 2026 by South Dakota 8,49 M. Together that makes at least eight states by our count L.
Some states choose temporary bans: Indiana, a moratorium until June 2027; Texas, until September 2027; South Dakota, until 2031, after the governor vetoed an indefinite one 117,118,49 M. The courts so far side with the states: the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (March 2026) held that the federal poultry law does not override Florida’s ban 119 M, and a federal court in Texas (January 2026) rejected the same argument 120 M; lawsuits continue on the ground that the bans restrict trade between states. US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in April 2026 that producers “will have to overcome a lot of scepticism” about safety 121 M.
The practical effect is on investors and logistics, not on buyers: in 2026 Wildtype is raising money to ship salmon to homes in every state except the eight with a ban or moratorium 122 M; Texas’s 2025 ban took it off the menu of a restaurant in Austin 123 M.
08 · ConsumersTrying and buying are different things: 30% of Americans are willing to try it and 19% to buy it, but the mass buyer has not yet seen the product
The most recent and detailed survey is Morning Consult for GFI (the advocacy organisation that commissioned it), June 2025. Respondents were first read a description: cultivated meat tastes the same as conventional meat and has already been sold in US restaurants; this pushes answers up. 30% of American adults would definitely or very likely try a free sample; 19% would definitely or very likely buy it 17 M. Americans expect cultivated meat to be worse than conventional meat on naturalness, taste, protein content and safety, and better on environmental impact (+10 points of net score); most have not tasted the product, and on many attributes 21–28% answered “don’t know” 124 M. Among those who do not want to try it, 41% say it is unnatural, 32% want to support farmers and 29% expect a bad taste 125 M.
Results from other countries are not comparable with the American ones: the wording, scales and descriptions differ. According to the British FSA’s summary (2025), between 16% and 41% of Britons are willing to eat cultivated meat, depending on the survey, with no significant change in 2022–2024 126 M. In Scotland in July 2026 42% would try it, but only 33% consider it safe and 33% think it should be sold 127 H. In an online survey about “clean meat” (2019), 59% of Chinese and 30% of Americans said they were very or extremely likely to buy it; the samples in China and India are skewed towards the urban and educated, and the answers are only intentions 128 H. The name matters too: 43% of Americans had heard “lab-grown”, 27% “cultivated” 129 M. According to a Tufts University study, the names “cultivated” or “cell-based” raise willingness to pay in the US by at most $1.97 compared with “lab-grown” (relayed from a news report; the basis of the price is not given) 130 L.
According to YouGov in 2024, even if cultivated meat is identical to conventional meat, 50% of Americans and 68% of Republicans would choose animal meat, and 14% would not eat any 131 M. But the main point is that there are almost no known buyers, and companies do not disclose sales. In 2023 the Washington restaurant China Chilcano, serving GOOD Meat’s chicken, took six reservations a week and stopped taking bookings after two months 132 M. Upside served chicken at the restaurant Bar Crenn only at monthly dinners (July 2023 to February 2024), about seven times 133 M. In June 2026 Wildtype’s salmon was served by five restaurants 134 M.
A warning from plant-based meat
Beyond Meat’s shares jumped 163% on their first day of trading (May 2019) 135 M. Revenue fell from a peak of $464.7m in 2021 to $275.5m in 2025 (an unaudited press release of April 2026), and sales volumes by 30% 136 H. The share of American households buying plant-based meat fell from 20% in 2021 to 11% in 2025, and sales in US stores to ≈$1bn, while the repeat-purchase rate did not change: the loss happened at the first trial, not in loyalty 137 H. The conclusion for cultivated meat is ours: initial interest does not by itself create lasting demand, especially when the product costs more than the conventional one L.
09 · Where the money wentFermentation, hybrids and pet food: alternative protein has changed its priorities
All three branches of alternative protein – plant-based alternatives, fermentation (micro-organisms produce a protein mass, like the mycelium in Quorn, or individual proteins, which is precision fermentation) and cultivated meat – went through a slump: $6.9bn in 2021 (our sum of three GFI reports from 2026; by GFI’s initial estimate, $5.0bn) and $881m in 2025; the share of cultivated meat was 28% in 2022 (the peak) and 8% in 2025 (our calculation) 138 M. In 2025 fermentation received ≈40% and plant-based alternatives ≈51% 139 M; in the first half of 2026 fermentation took $252m of $359m, or 70% (preliminary GFI data) 71 H.
Money is partly flowing into precision fermentation: its share of fermentation rose from 33% in 2023 to 66% in 2025, because investors choose companies that sell ingredients to other producers and can show orders 140 H. The three largest fermentation deals of 2025: The EVERY Company (egg protein, $55m, Series D), Formo ($36m, venture debt) and The Protein Brewery ($35m, Series B) 141 H. The sums are small, and failures occur here too: Meati ($365–450m raised, depending on the source) sold its assets in 2025 for ≈$4m 142 M; construction of Liberation Bioindustries’ 600,000-litre plant (Indiana) has been halted, with $125m spent and another $25m still missing 143 M; Solar Foods had revenue of €0.1m in the first half of 2026 144 H, although the nominal capacity of its plant is 160 tonnes a year (company data) L. So money is going not to the winner but to whoever is closest to sales.
Cultivated meat is also moving from a “steak without an animal” to an ingredient: Mosa Meat has applied in the EU for cultivated beef fat to be blended with plant protein 145 M, and Hoxton Farms (Britain) is preparing pork fat and expects its first sales in early 2027 146 L. Mission Barns sold meatballs made with cultivated fat and plant protein (November 2025, one day, share of cells not disclosed) 3 M. The easiest market is pet food: in the EU feed ingredients need no pre-market approval, so only production is registered (BioCraft, Austria, 2025; Bene Meat, Czechia, 2023) 147 M. Meatly has sold dog treats in one Pets at Home shop since February 2025 (≈750 packs, share of cells not disclosed) 148 M, and in 2026 raised £10.4m for a 20,000-litre reactor 149 L.
Big meat companies invested selectively: Cargill in Memphis Meats (now Upside Foods) in 2017 and Tyson, reportedly, in 2018 150 M; JBS bought a controlling stake in Spain’s BioTech Foods in 2021 for about $100m and since 2023 has been building a plant of more than 1,000 tonnes a year in San Sebastián (whether it has started operating has not been checked) 151 M.
10 · UkraineA chicken exporter: cultivated meat is unlikely to affect its market by 2040, and the rules will come from the EU
Ukraine is a producer and exporter of chicken: in 2024, according to FAOSTAT, it produced 1,164,000 tonnes of poultry, 672,000 tonnes of pork and 245,000 tonnes of beef; poultry accounts for 56% of these three meats 152 M. Beef output has fallen by 68% since 2000 (excluding the territories occupied since 2014; measured from 2013, the fall is 43%), along with the shrinking cattle herd (according to a USDA estimate from September 2025, the herd at the start of 2026 was 1.94m head, against 2.25m at the start of 2024) 152,153 M. MHP produced 926,000 tonnes of chicken in 2025 (677,000 tonnes in Ukraine) and exported ≈369,000 tonnes from Ukraine 154 M.
In 2023 each Ukrainian had 49.5 kg of meat (FAO supply data; according to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, 54.7 kg): 2.5 times less than an American, and less than in China 23,155 M. We found no Ukrainian companies, pilot plants or separate rules for cultivated meat, in either English or Ukrainian 156 L. The State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection publishes a general definition of a novel food; procedures for cell-based meat have not been checked (the agency’s pages and zakon.rada.gov.ua did not open) 157 L. As Ukraine moves closer to the EU, the EU’s novel foods regulation, with approval through EFSA, will most likely apply (our estimate) L.
By 2040, in our estimate L: cultivated meat will not become a noticeable competitor to Ukrainian chicken, either at home or in the EU, where the duty-free import quota for Ukrainian poultry under the updated agreement of October 2025 is reportedly 120,000 tonnes a year 158 M; EU rules on names will affect Ukrainian producers only if they sell plant-based or cell-based products there: under a provisional deal (March 2026) 31 names of animals and cuts will be banned, and the final votes are still to come 112 H; the niche, if one ever appears, will most likely be pet food or contract biomanufacturing, not steaks.
11 · Forecast2035–2040: hybrids, fat and pet food – tens of thousands of tonnes in the base case, up to 1.5m tonnes in the best case, less than 1% of the market
Forecasts have erred in one direction: of 273 Rethink Priorities forecasts, the deadline had passed for 90 (as of January 2022); 80 were too optimistic and none too pessimistic. Only “firsts” (such as the sale of a single dish in Singapore) came true, and no sales forecast looking more than seven years ahead has come true 35 H.
35% of world meat in 2040 (A.T. Kearney) means ≈150m tonnes a year (our calculation) 18 L. Even McKinsey’s upper bound for 2030 (1.5m tonnes, 0.5% of world meat) required 220–440m litres of reactors 159 M – 11,000–22,000 times the largest line of 2026 (our calculation) L.
Calculator: how many plants are needed for a given share of world meat in 2040
Choose a market share, the capacity of one plant and the capital cost. The calculator multiplies the share by ≈435m tonnes of world meat in 2040 (our extrapolation; depending on the base, OECD-FAO or FAOSTAT, the range is 425–447m tonnes) and works out the number of plants and the investment. It assumes that each plant runs at 100% capacity all year, so the number of plants is a lower bound. The CE Delft estimate, in 2021 dollars, has a margin of error of −20% to +40%. The default is a 10,000-tonne plant and $45 of capital cost per kilogram of annual capacity, as in CE Delft’s base-case project: ≈$450m per plant, which is more than the whole industry raised in 2025 ($73.9m). The result is also compared with the $3.4bn the industry has raised in total since 2016.
Six Rethink Priorities forecasters (five of them from Metaculus) gave in 2021 a 15% chance that, in at least one 12-month period before the end of 2031, sales would exceed 100,000 tonnes, a 22% chance that this would happen before the end of 2036, and a 9% chance that sales would exceed 1m tonnes before the end of 2036; they gave 54% that sales would not exceed 100,000 tonnes before the end of 2051 160 M. This is far below consultants’ forecasts, but the deadlines have not yet arrived.
Our scenarios for 2040
Pessimistic: ≈10,000 tonnes a year, ≈0.002% of world meat. A niche: pet food, fat for hybrids, pâtés; the US bans remain, and the EU approves one or two ingredients L.
Base: ≈50,000 tonnes a year, ≈0.01%. Roughly five plants on the scale of the CE Delft model, or dozens of smaller lines, mostly in Asia and the Middle East with state co-financing; hybrids with 3–50% cells and fat are on sale. This is below the 100,000-tonne threshold: the 2021 forecasters gave a 22% chance of exceeding it before the end of 2036 and 46% before the end of 2051 L.
Optimistic: ≈1.5m tonnes a year, ≈0.3%. This is McKinsey’s upper bound for 2030, postponed by ten years. It requires ≈150 plants of 10,000 tonnes each, ≈$70bn (our calculation), state guarantees as in energy, and a proven production cost below $10 per kg L.
Our assessment: what is likely by 2035–2040
| Area | What, in our estimate, is likely | Confidence | What could change the picture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volumes | Tens of thousands of tonnes a year, under 0.1% of world meat | Low | State money on the scale of energy (China, the Gulf states, Singapore) |
| Products | Hybrids with 3–50% cells, fat, pâtés, foie gras, fish; steaks are a rarity | Medium | A breakthrough in scaffolds and oxygen delivery |
| Production cost | Cell mass at the best plants costs $10–25 per kg; parity with minced beef (≈$7.5 per kg) is unattainable at that level | Low | Independently verified plant data |
| Animal feed | The first mass market: no pre-market approval in the EU | Medium | EU feed rules; the price against meat waste |
| Approvals | By 2030 the first approvals in the EU and Britain (fat, hybrids) and new ones in Asia and the Middle East | Medium | Campaigns against “lab food” |
| Bans | Temporary bans in the US will partly continue and partly be lifted by courts or legislators | Low | Court rulings on interstate trade |
| Money | Venture rounds stay small; plants will be built with state participation or by big food companies | Medium | Falling interest rates, interest from the meat giants |
| Climate | No noticeable effect on livestock emissions by 2040: the volumes are too small | High | — |
| Ukraine | No noticeable effect on chicken; the rules come from the EU | Medium | The pace of EU accession; niche feed producers |
12 · Honesty and limitationsThe strongest arguments against the conclusion, and what we do not know
The optimists' case
Biology is getting cheaper fast. Growth medium, according to GFI, has become more than 99% cheaper in a decade 85 M, but mostly on the evidence of company claims 85 L; Parima claims a 99% fall in production cost against its own earlier runs (the baseline is not named) 22 L, and if the claims are confirmed, our base case will turn out too low.
Approvals are multiplying. The number of company–country pairs with an approval has risen from three at the end of 2023 to eleven in 2026 (our count; the now-closed Believer is included; an approval does not mean sales at scale) 161 L.
Conventional meat is getting dearer. Ground beef in the United States has risen in price by 65% in ten years (in nominal terms), to a record in August 2026 83 H, but the OECD-FAO expects real prices to peak around 2027 and, by 2034, to be 8% below the baseline 24 H. Dearer meat makes parity easier to reach.
The solar analogy. Panels, batteries and genome sequencing all got cheaper as cumulative output grew (our analogy), and Rethink Priorities places the CE Delft model in the “solar” class (the problem is judged solvable), although its best case assumes that growth factors become 1,000 times cheaper and that a plant's payback takes 30 years 97 M. If cultivated meat follows this path, the main obstacle will prove to be a shortage of money for the first plants, not biology.
Why we stand by our conclusion
All the optimistic figures are claims or models, not verified plant production costs: by GFI's own admission, not a single new peer-reviewed techno-economic model appeared in 2025 77 H, and most models, according to GFI in 2026, probably overstate cell mass about threefold 162 M. Solar panels, in our estimate, got cheaper thanks to subsidies that created a market before prices fell L; for cultivated meat there is no such market yet: governments give all alternative proteins no more than 10% of the money needed 73 M. Until funding appears, production cost will not be verified at scale.
Limitations of this briefing
- Nobody discloses sales. We compare capacity: operating capacity is less than 1,000 tonnes a year, excluding Believer's plant of 10,000–12,000 tonnes, which never operated commercially; this is an upper-bound estimate L.
- Production cost is models and claims. There is no independently verified figure, and the calculator reproduces the models approximately, with our choice of parameters.
- Funding figures get revised. GFI changes past years, mostly upwards, so 2025 and the first half of 2026 are first estimates.
- US bans. We found no complete national list of bans for 2026, so “eight states” is our count from regional trackers and the trade press.
- Surveys are incompatible: the questions and scales differ, so the shares of those “willing to try” cannot be compared.
- Ukraine. We did not obtain official series from Ukraine's State Statistics Service (FAOSTAT and USDA were used instead), and the route via the EU is our estimate.
- Forecasts. Forecasts by banks and consultancies from 2019–2021 are known mostly from retellings (Vice, GFI, Green Queen), because the originals from McKinsey, BCG and A.T. Kearney could not be opened during checking.
13 · QuestionsFrequently asked questions
What is cultivated meat?
Meat grown from animal cells in a bioreactor rather than taken from a slaughtered animal. Cells are taken by biopsy, multiplied in a nutrient medium, turned into muscle or fat and harvested. The cycle takes two to eight weeks.
Where can you buy cultivated meat in 2026?
Sales to people are allowed in Singapore, the US, Israel, and Australia and New Zealand; in Hong Kong Vow’s products are sold on the strength of Singapore’s approval. But it is mostly sold in a few restaurants and in small batches, often blended with plant protein. As far as we know, the EU and the UK had no approval for human food as of October 2026; the UK allows pet food.
Why is cultivated meat so expensive?
The growth medium has become more than 99% cheaper by GFI’s estimate (based on company claims), but plants remain costly: a 10,000-tonne model plant costs about $450m, and the Believer Meats building alone cost $154m excluding equipment. A single plant of that kind costs more than the whole industry raised in 2025 ($73.9m). The best models give $13–37 a kg; below $10 only if investors will wait 30 years for payback. There is no verified cost from a real plant.
Why did investment fall by 95%?
The 2021 peak ($1.5bn) rested on a few large rounds and near-zero interest rates. After 2022 rates rose, venture capital shrank and in 2025 AI took almost half of all venture money. Venture funds are poorly suited to building plants, and banks want proven costs. In 2025 the industry raised $73.9m.
How much cultivated meat will there be in 2040?
In our base scenario about 50,000 tonnes a year, roughly 0.01% of world meat, mostly as hybrids, fat as an ingredient, pâtés and pet food. Forecasts made in 2019–2021 promised 20–35% of the market by 2040; of 90 predictions whose deadline had passed, 80 proved too optimistic.
14 · NextRead also
15 · SourcesSources and methodology
Each number in the text leads to a source. Confidence labels: H — primary source (regulator, statistics, scientific paper, financial statements, GFI report), M — secondary source, or one cross-checked against several, L — estimate, claim by a company or official, a single unconfirmed source or our own calculation. The data were collected and cross-checked by 18 AI agents with search access: nine strands, each with a researcher and a sceptic who tried to refute the key figures. There are no refuted facts; figures corrected by the sceptics have been replaced in the text. All sums are in US dollars unless stated otherwise.
- The first cultivated burger, 2013 (NBC News, Wikipedia). en.wikipedia.org M
- Scientific American — Mark Post on timing and price, 2013. scientificamerican.com M
- Food Business Africa/Middle East — Mission Barns’ first US retail sale. foodbusinessmea.com M
- GFI — 2026 State of the Industry: cultivated meat, seafood and ingredients. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2021 State of the Industry: cultivated meat (PitchBook data). gfi.org H
- Green Queen — Believer Meats shuts down, December 2025. greenqueen.com.hk M
- vegconomist — Meatable goes into liquidation. vegconomist.com M
- CSG Midwest, Food Safety, National Agricultural Law Center — state bans. csgmidwest.org M
- FAOSTAT — world meat production. ourworldindata.org H
- GFI — State of the Industry: production scale (Vow, 20,000 L). gfi.org H
- GFI — Believer Meats: plant and bankruptcy. gfi.org H
- Humbird — scale-up economics for cultured meat (Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 2021). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov H
- CE Delft — techno-economic assessment of cultivated meat (2021, with corrigendum). cedelft.eu M
- GFI — where cultivated meat can be sold. gfi.org M
- FoodNavigator — cultivated meat approved in four territories. foodnavigator.com M
- Food Safety News — EFSA reviews cultivated meat applications (August 2025); status as of October 2026 per Food Safety News. foodsafetynews.com M
- GFI and Morning Consult — US consumers, June 2025. gfi.org M
- A.T. Kearney — 2040 forecast (via Vice), 2019. vice.com M
- GFI — the science of cultivated meat (primer). gfi.org M
- FDA — human food made with cultured animal cells. fda.gov H
- FAOSTAT via Our World in Data — animals slaughtered. ourworldindata.org H
- vegconomist — Parima’s 22,000 L run. vegconomist.com L
- FAO via Our World in Data — meat supply per person. ourworldindata.org M
- OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025–2034, meat chapter. oecd.org H
- FAO — pathways towards lower emissions, 2023. fao.org H
- Poore and Nemecek (Science, 2018) as cited by CE Delft. gfieurope.org M
- CE Delft — life cycle assessment of cultivated meat (2021). gfieurope.org M
- Risner et al. — emissions assessment, 2023 preprint. foodnavigator.com L
- Winston Churchill, Fifty Years Hence, 1931. nationalchurchillmuseum.org H
- Alexis Carrel’s chicken heart culture (Wikipedia). en.wikipedia.org M
- Willem van Eelen (Wikipedia, Scientific American). en.wikipedia.org M
- Benjaminson et al. — goldfish muscle explants (Acta Astronautica, 2002). ebi.ac.uk H
- Edelman et al. — In vitro-cultured meat production (Tissue Engineering, 2005). ebi.ac.uk H
- Scientific American — Dutch government grant, 2005. scientificamerican.com M
- Rethink Priorities — audit of cultured meat predictions. rethinkpriorities.org H
- Eat Just — promise of a product by end-2018 (Wikipedia). en.wikipedia.org M
- First sale of cultivated meat in Singapore, December 2020. en.wikipedia.org M
- Future Meat Technologies — $347m Series B (press release via ADM). adm.com L
- Green Queen — Upside Foods $400m Series C. greenqueen.com.hk M
- USDA clears Upside and GOOD Meat chicken, June 2023. en.wikipedia.org M
- Italian Law No. 172 of 1 December 2023 (Normattiva). normattiva.it H
- Florida Senate — SB 1084. flsenate.gov H
- GFI — 2023 State of the Industry: cultivated meat and seafood. gfi.org H
- FoodNavigator — GOOD Meat 3 in Singapore. foodnavigator.com M
- FSANZ — application A1269, Vow cultured quail. foodstandards.gov.au H
- FDA — inventory of completed pre-market consultations for cultured animal cells. fda.gov H
- Singapore clears Aleph Farms steak, August 2026. cultivated-x.com M
- vegconomist — Hungary’s parliament votes for a ban. vegconomist.com M
- South Dakota — SB 124 (moratorium). csgmidwest.org M
- Green Queen — industry leaders seek revenue beyond food. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Green Queen — cultivated meat outlook, February 2026. greenqueen.com.hk L
- AgFunderNews — SCiFi Foods closes. agfundernews.com M
- GFI — largest deals of 2021. gfi.org H
- GFI — largest deals of 2025. gfi.org H
- Green Queen and Calcalist — Aleph Farms valuation cut. greenqueen.com.hk M
- GFI — interest rates and venture capital. gfi.org H
- GFI — the 2023 venture downturn. gfi.org H
- GFI — AI share of global funding in 2025. gfi.org H
- CE Delft, 2021 — model plant design. cedelft.eu M
- Green Queen — Upside Foods bid for the Believer plant. greenqueen.com.hk M
- vegconomist — USDA approves Believer Meats label and plant. vegconomist.com M
- AgFunderNews — letter of intent for the Believer plant, October 2026. agfundernews.com M
- AgFunderNews — New Age Eats shuts down. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Green Queen — company closures 2025–2026. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Green Queen — Cultimate Foods winds down. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Vow cuts a third of staff, January 2025. vegconomist.com M
- GFI — number of cultivated meat companies. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2025 mergers and acquisitions. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2025 insider-led rounds. gfi.org H
- Green Queen — Mosa Meat raises €15m. greenqueen.com.hk M
- GFI — alternative protein investment, H1 2026. gfi.org H
- GFI — outlook for 2026. gfi.org H
- GFI — government funding for alternative proteins. vegconomist.com M
- Dutch government — €60m for cellular agriculture (via GFI). gfieurope.org H
- SDIC (China) — CNY 4bn for biomanufacturing (via GFI). gfi.org H
- GFI — US federal research funding cuts. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2026 State of the Industry: missing cost data and new models. gfi.org H
- Memphis Meats cost claims in the press (WSJ via Quartz, AgFunderNews). liveinthefuture.org L
- vegconomist — Gourmey: €7 per kg (Arthur D. Little assessment). vegconomist.com L
- vegconomist — Arthur D. Little on costs, July 2026. vegconomist.com L
- Pasitka et al. — continuous cultivated chicken production (Nature Food, 2024). cris.huji.ac.il H
- Green Queen — Vow’s Forged products in Australia. greenqueen.com.hk M
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics — average price of ground beef. fred.stlouisfed.org H
- GFI (Liz Specht) — culture medium cost analysis, 2020. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2026 State of the Industry: medium cost. gfi.org M
- Serum-free media review (npj Science of Food, 2024). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov H
- Our arithmetic on Humbird’s model with $0.20/L medium. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov L
- Humbird, 2021 — affordability threshold. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov H
- Humbird (2021) and GFI — retail price to production cost ratio. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov M
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics — average chicken and pork prices. fred.stlouisfed.org H
- Risner et al. — techno-economic assessment (Foods, 2021; UC Davis). pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov H
- GFI — companies and patents, 2025. gfi.org M
- Tufts University — immortalised bovine cells (ACS Synthetic Biology, 2023). ebi.ac.uk H
- GFI — serum-free media. gfi.org M
- Humbird, 2021 — cell density limits. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov H
- Stout et al. — Beefy-9 medium (Tufts University). ebi.ac.uk H
- Rethink Priorities — comparison of techno-economic analyses. rethinkpriorities.org M
- Lin et al. — antimicrobial peptides against contamination (Food Microbiology, 2026). ebi.ac.uk H
- Humbird, 2021 — bioreactor cost and size. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov H
- Bioreactor modelling for cultivated meat (Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 2026). ebi.ac.uk H
- Arthur D. Little — scaling by replicating lines. foodnavigator.com L
- AgFunderNews — Upside Foods: 2,000 L reactors and flasks. agfundernews.com M
- Hwang et al. — review of 2023–2025 patents and publications (Foods, 2025). ebi.ac.uk H
- FoodNavigator and GFI — Vow’s 20,000 L reactor. foodnavigator.com L
- CellRev — continuous culture and closure (trade press). foodnavigator.com L
- vegconomist — FSANZ approves Parima duck. vegconomist.com M
- FSANZ — approval report A1269 (on sales of Vow products in Hong Kong). foodstandards.gov.au H
- FDA — consultation on cultured pork fat. fda.gov H
- FDA — consultation on cultured salmon. fda.gov H
- Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 on novel foods — timelines. eur-lex.europa.eu H
- Eunews — Austria, France and Italy note at the AGRIFISH Council. eunews.it M
- GFI and Green Queen — EU deal on meat names, March 2026. gfi.org H
- FSA — sandbox report, September 2026. gov.uk H
- Meatly — UK pet food clearance. en.wikipedia.org M
- European Commission — Italy’s TRIS breach. osborneclarke.com M
- Reason — DeSantis signs the ban. reason.com M
- Indiana — HB 1425 (moratorium). csgmidwest.org M
- Texas — SB 261. nationalaglawcenter.org M
- US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit — Upside Foods v. Florida. wlrn.org M
- National Agricultural Law Center — Texas court ruling, January 2026. nationalaglawcenter.org M
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a Senate hearing, April 2026. westernagnetwork.com M
- Wildtype — Kickstarter campaign, June 2026. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Green Queen — restaurants serving Wildtype salmon. greenqueen.com.hk M
- GFI and Morning Consult — perceptions of cultivated meat. gfi.org M
- GFI and Morning Consult — reasons for refusal. gfi.org M
- FSA — rapid evidence review on consumers, 2025. foodsafetynews.com M
- Food Standards Scotland — consumer tracker, wave 22. foodstandards.gov.scot H
- Bryant et al. — survey in the US, China and India (Frontiers, 2019). frontiersin.org H
- GFI and Morning Consult — awareness of names. gfi.org M
- Tufts University — names and willingness to pay (Food Quality and Preference). greenqueen.com.hk M
- YouGov — choosing between identical lab-grown and animal meat, 2024. vegconomist.com M
- China Chilcano — cultivated chicken on the menu, 2023. dcist.com M
- Upside Foods at Bar Crenn, 2023–2024. just-food.com M
- Restaurants serving Wildtype salmon, 2025–2026. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Beyond Meat IPO, May 2019. en.wikipedia.org M
- Beyond Meat — annual reports (10-K) and 2025 results. sec.gov H
- GFI and SPINS — US plant-based meat retail sales, 2025. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2026 State of the Industry: investment by alternative protein pillar. gfi.org H
- GFI — 2026 State of the Industry: fermentation. gfi.org H
- GFI — precision fermentation share of investment. gfi.org H
- GFI — largest fermentation deals of 2025. gfi.org H
- Meati Foods — asset sale, 2025. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Liberation Bioindustries — Indiana plant paused. agfundernews.com M
- Solar Foods — January–June 2026 report. investors.solarfoods.com H
- Green Queen — Mosa Meat files for cultivated fat. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Green Queen — 2026 CEO outlook (Hoxton Farms, BlueNalu). greenqueen.com.hk L
- BioCraft and Bene Meat — EU feed registrations. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Meatly’s first batch of treats, February 2025. foodmanufacture.co.uk M
- Vestbee — Meatly raises £10.4m. vestbee.com L
- Tyson and Cargill — alternative protein investments. en.wikipedia.org M
- JBS and BioTech Foods — San Sebastián plant. thecattlesite.com M
- FAOSTAT — meat production in Ukraine. ourworldindata.org M
- USDA FAS Kyiv — livestock and products annual, 2025. agriexchange.apeda.gov.in M
- MHP — 2025 operating results. foodagribusiness.world M
- Ministry of Agrarian Policy — meat consumption per person. ukragroconsult.com M
- Search for Ukrainian cultivated meat companies and rules (our research). taylorwessing.com L
- State Service for Food Safety — definition of novel food. dpss.gov.ua L
- Revised EU–Ukraine trade deal: poultry quota. en.usm.media M
- McKinsey — cultivated meat to 2030 (via Green Queen), 2021. greenqueen.com.hk M
- Dullaghan and Linch (Rethink Priorities) — cultured meat volume forecasts, 2022. forum.effectivealtruism.org M
- Our count of company–jurisdiction clearances from regulators and trade press. cultivated-x.com L
- GFI — Cultivated TEA 2.0, phase 1a (via trade press). proteinproductiontechnology.com M