neoduality _ 0003 _ meat 2.0

_{by t3sh}

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hi,

10 years from now, it’s just a normal work week. you pop by the supermarket to get things for dinner, and walk out with some juicy chicken breast, a beautifully marbled rib-eye steak, and some amazingly fresh salmon you’re going to make sashimi with on the weekend.

you’ve done this countless times.

only this time, there’s something fundamentally different about your purchase.

no chicken, cow, or fish were killed for these items.

how come

there’s a technology very few are talking about, and it’s poised to reshape humanity at its core forever. and trust me, this is not hyperbole; you just need to think deeply for a moment how fundamental this shift is, deep into our species’ roots.

since the dawn of us, the equation “kill to eat” has walked along our evolution. it’s inflated into massive industrial slaughter to sate our demands, igniting fierce conversations, endless opinions, scattered initiatives, relentless fights, tangled misunderstandings.

the technology we’re talking about in this issue has the potential to make this equation vanish.

“cultivated” or “lab-grown” meat.

in this video, Uma Valeti, the CEO of UPSIDE Foods, who is laser-focused on advancing the commercial viability of meat farmed directly from real meat cells, shares a little story:

I’m a meat eater myself—love my burgers, steaks, fried chicken. Yet it doesn’t take much to realize that the path we’re on right now isn’t the bright side of humanity. This is technology I’m truly waiting for and looking forward to.

It’s just unrealistic to expect billions of people globally to quit meat in a fast manner. In recent decades, demand—and therefore production—has at least doubled, by multiple sources and stats, with no signs of slowing down. Unless…?

We have a much better chance by giving people what they want, but in a different way. We’ll get there faster by rendering slaughter unnecessary or costlier than cultivating in a lab. And we’re definitely on our way there.

if it feels like it’s going to take forever, let this issue give you a glimpse — it’s quite hopeful

so let’s break it down:
the latest, most realistic strides in lab-grown meat, and dive into some “fun” questions:

• what meat products can we actually grow in a lab?

• how far can we push this tech in the near future?

• how realistic is it to slash its price to match what we pay today,
  and how long until that day arrives?

today’s state

• 🟢 chicken breast is cool. but what else could we grow in a lab, beyond the familiar cuts?

  • good news for for sushi lovers (myself included). on may 28, 2025, the fda handed wildtype’s cultivated salmon a “no-questions” letter, declaring it as safe as its ocean-caught cousins and handing the first u.s. green light to cell-cultured seafood.

• 🟢 it’s just the start. we already see minced chicken and boneless filets + prototypes of whole beef steaks, marbled pork loins.

• 🟠 wings or ribs, other bone-in products are a much trickier puzzle but work is ongoing. we need edible or removable “bones” and harmonized co-cultures of muscle, fat, cartilage, and connective tissue.

  • researchers are tinkering with plant-based calcium scaffolds and collagen-hydroxyapatite blends, and high-resolution bioprinters are already capable of laying down muscle and cartilage layers.

  • we can expect first prototypes by around 2028–2030.

  • true, multi-tissue bone-in cuts—grown end-to-end in bioreactors—will follow once costs and scale align, likely landing in specialty grocers by the early-to-mid-2030s.

lab-grown meat is amazing, but i understand the concerns. some people say it’s not natural and that can feel scary. it just feels different in a way that’s unsettling. though...

sounds dark, but that’s what “natural” looks like in modern factory farming.

contamination

• 🔴 remains one of the biggest real challenges. in a real cow, the immune system fights bacteria and maintains balance. in a lab bioreactor, there’s no cow, so you have to manage sterility, feed cells, and remove waste yourself. if even a tiny part of the bioreactor gets contaminated, the entire batch must be discarded, leading to high risk and a lot of waste.

  • around 11% of batches get trashed as of january 2025. if contamination slips past quality control there’s a real risk of severe food poisoning.

  • companies are fighting contamination, but it’s very difficult. former upside foods staff report that contaminated chicken cultures were routinely incinerated, even as management publicly claimed they were “ready for market.”

  • sales stopped due to quality-control issues. in 2024, cultivated chicken disappeared from u.s. and singapore menus because upside and good meat paused sales to address contamination and scaling problems.

• 🟢 there is progress: ai-driven sensors can help. the cultivated b launched ai-powered, multi-channel biosensors that monitor bioreactors in real time, flagging contamination early and reducing quality-control downtime. →

is lab meat contamination worse than traditional meat?

conventional livestock meat is one of the most frequently contaminated foods in the modern diet. animals have respiratory systems (so respiratory pathogens), and there’s fecal contamination in the meat supply, prions, etc.

cultured meat has no respiratory or gastrointestinal system to spread disease, and no nervous system to act as a reservoir for prions (prions are infectious agents—unlike viruses or bacteria—that are composed of misfolded protein. they can cause severe neurological diseases in animals and humans, often leading to fatal outcomes. unlike other pathogens, prions do not contain genetic material like DNA or RNA, which is why they’re not considered living organisms—and they’re exceptionally resistant to conventional sterilization methods).

bottom line: saying farmed meat is “less prone” to contamination is inaccurate. traditional carcass processing is a documented, ongoing source of food-borne illness and prion exposure, whereas cultured meat trades those familiar hazards for manageable, equipment-driven sterility challenges.

“feeding” cells

• 🔴 to grow meat cells, you have to feed them. right now, most producers use fetal bovine serum (FBS). it comes from the blood of unborn calves and has the hormones and nutrients cells need to grow. while FBS works well, it’s super expensive and raises ethical concerns because it’s animal-derived.

• 🟢 a 2024–25 study showed that you can make growth media without serum for under $1 per liter, keep the same yields, remove animal-derived contaminants, and get closer to price parity. →

politics

science makes the case, but powerful farming interests are pushing back.

• 🔴 farming corporations hold massive social and political clout and they’re pushing back. in May 2024, Florida banned producing or selling cultivated meat, citing “unknown long-term health impacts” and skipped testing.

• 🔴 similar laws and pressure tactics are cropping up around the world (e.g. Italy), using regulations and lobbying to slow down cultivated meat.

but.. we see a lot of global support:

• 🟢 Israel: Ministry of Health okayed Aleph Farms’ cultivated steak on 17 Jan 2024, the world’s first approval for cow-cell meat and a proof that regulators will move when safety data stack up →

• 🟢 Australia/NZ: FSANZ cleared Vow’s cultured quail on 26 Mar 2025, opening the first cell-meat pathway in Australia & NZ and writing new clauses into the Food Standards Code for future applicants →

• 🟢 South Korea: Uiseong Bio-Valley boost. South Korea earmarked ₩14.5 B (US $9.9 M) in Mar 2025 to build a national cultivated-meat R&D hub inside a special regulatory zone, promising 60 jobs and one-stop licensing support →

big question time

get deeper

for those this topic touched and you want to dive deeper, here are some great finds to guide you further:

• an in-depth webinar on cost drivers for lab-grown meat: YouTube

• a reddit thread where diverse perspectives converge: Reddit

investment opportunities

⚠️ warning: there’s no guaranteed path to liquidity but the company holds a plausible shot at rewriting how meat is made.

• mosa meat https://mosameat.com/invest. reality check: netherlands’ closest eu player to regulatory filing, but still pre-revenue and burning cash for scale-up. treat it as locked-up capital for 5–10 years.

i don’t know about you guys, but i can’t wait to taste my first cultivated steak. and i’m already imagining a future where the equation kill to eat dissolves into history.

it’ll mark a clear break from how things used to be for me and millions of others. we’ll look back and realize how strange it was to accept bloodied fields as our only option.

i believe that pretty soon, discussions won’t center on whether lab-grown meat is “natural,” but on its price, its taste, and how fast it can reach our tables.

stay curious, stay hopeful, and keep paying attention to these shifts - because the future is already materializing, one cell at a time.

share feedback, forward if useful.

until next week, keep noticing the details.

— t3sh