From petri dish to pub menu: the race to produce a delicious animal-free burger is under way

Amy Lewin maps out the European capitals competing to win big in the lab-grown meat game

When the first lab-grown burger was made in 2013, it cost €250k to produce. Image above: Mosa Meat’s lab-grown burger patty

Over a decade ago, the world’s first lab-grown burger was eaten, in London. It was, according to the food critics who tried it, ‘close’ in ‘mouth feel’ to being the real thing, but it needed a little more salt and pepper, and it wasn’t very ‘juicy’.

The burger had been grown in a lab in the Netherlands. Stem cells were extracted from cow muscle, which were then fed with culture, causing them to develop and multiply. The research required to get that patty to those critics’ forks cost £215,000 — a figure that scientists and entrepreneurs expected to come down over time.

11 years later, lab-grown meat still isn’t on offer in the UK, even at the most high-end restaurants — although the same professor who developed that original lab burger says it would now cost less than a tenner to produce. (A bargain, by comparison.) Cultivated chicken isn’t on offer here yet either. And if you’re after some, you’ll need to board a flight to Singapore.

But things might be changing.