Unlike plant-based proteins like Beyond Meat or Impossible Burgers, lab-grown meat is actually meat. Scientists take stem cells from a cow, chicken, or any other animal, culture them in a lab, and create anything from steak to seafood to leather to egg whites. The process hasn’t been perfected yet, and Americans can’t buy lab-grown meat in the supermarket, but startups and investors have flooded this market with the hope that lab-grown meat could become a safer, more ethical, and more sustainable competitor to conventional meat. That said, lab-grown meat still faces many hurdles to get there, from cost to public perception to a part of the production process that still leads to the slaughter of animals. Today, we explore how lab-grown meat is made, what the barriers are, and how the industry could overcome them. With special guest Dr. David Block, Ernest Gallo Endowed Chair of Viticulture and Enology and Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Davis.

This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. Learn more at solutionsjournalism.org.