Harper's essay examines why lab-grown meat failed to deliver on its 2013 promise
A Harper's Magazine feature traces the rise and stall of cellular agriculture, from Mark Post's $330,000 lab burger to today's unfulfilled predictions.
What to know
- Lab-grown meat, pitched in 2013 as a climate solution that would reach consumers within a decade, has failed to achieve commercial viability 13 years later despite attracting $3 billion in investment and 140 companies globally.
- The technology's core problems remain unsolved: production costs are prohibitive, taste and texture lag behind both conventional meat and plant-based alternatives, and the product lacks the fat content expected in real beef.
- The stalled rollout reflects a gap between technological capability and commercial reality—Post's burger proved cellular agriculture was possible, but not that it would ever be cheaper or better than existing options.
The dispute Whether lab-grown meat's failure reflects fundamental technological limitations or industry sabotage; whether plant-based proteins are a better solution or whether questioning meat consumption itself is the real answer. · positions read across 23 posts and comments
Meat industry lobbying and regulatory barriers deliberately blocked lab-grown meat to protect conventional beef.
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“it is sad how the lobbying of old evil industries like tobacco and animal-killing can convince the politicians and the public to outlaw and demonize their less-evil competition like vaping and lab-grown meat”
dinkblam · Hacker News ↗
Lab-grown meat was always an unrealistic promise; plant-based and insect proteins offer better near-term solutions.
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“I had long given up on lab-grown meat. It started feeling like fusion, always around the corner, but never there (or at least not in an affordable way).”
Semaphor · Hacker News ↗
Lab-grown meat is ethically superior to conventional farming, but cost and taste remain barriers to adoption.
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“Currently the lab grown meat is too expensive and not good tasting enough to compete with real meat and plant based alternatives exist so - not it's time yet.”
here_to_learn · Hacker News ↗
Mark Post Maastricht University vascular physiology professor, lab-grown meat pioneer
Sergey Brin Google co-founderJosh Schonwald Food author and tasterHanni Rützler Austrian nutrition scientist and taster
How it unfolded 0 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump
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Harper's Magazine publishes retrospective on lab-grown meat's unfulfilled promise — A long-form essay titled 'Where's the Beef?: The lab-grown-meat revolution that wasn't' examines why cellular agriculture failed to become a commercial reality despite Post's 2013 prediction that lab meat would be a consumer product within a decade. The piece traces the technology's stalled progress over 13 years.
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Lab-grown meat demonstration triggers investment gold rush — Post's public tasting sparks rapid industry expansion. Within months, 140 companies launch across six continents to replicate Post's work with beef, chicken, pork, fish, and other species. The sector attracts $3 billion in investment.
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Tasters report burger lacks fat, flavor, and conventional taste — Schonwald characterizes the lab burger as dry and cake-like due to missing fat. Hanni Rützler notes the burger's blandness, suggesting room for improvement. Roughly $150,000 worth of the patty remains uneaten after the event.
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background
Mark Post unveils first lab-grown beef burger in London — Post, a vascular physiology professor at Maastricht University, publicly demonstrates a burger made from bovine stem cells cultivated in the lab. The patty cost $330,000 to produce and was funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Two tasters—food author Josh Schonwald and nutrition scientist Hanni Rützler—sampled the burger at a press event at Riverside Studios.
What people are saying 23 voices from 2 sites · verbatim
- Why did lab-grown meat fail to achieve the cost reductions that were predicted in 2013?
- Can the taste and texture problems be solved, or are they inherent to the production method?
- Did regulatory barriers or meat industry lobbying actively block lab-grown meat commercialization?
- Yesterday
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I worked in this industry for almost five years. Even the “fermented” alternative meats (bacterial, fungal cell culture) which were basically a drop-in fit with existing large scale fermentation plants were still not cost-competitive with chicken. Some were on par with beef if you made some hand-wavy assumptions about scale.The killer was usually…
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Even if I very much hope to live to see a profitable production of animal proteins without growing and killing animals, I do not believe that there is the slightest chance that this approach, of the "lab-grown meat" will ever succeed to produce meat that is tasty and cheaper than e.g. chicken breast.In the long term, the only way to produce…
- Sep 24
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It was going to be celebrity meat. As in, genetically identical to celebrities. In some circles, it would become de rigueur to host dinner parties at which one served meat cultured from the people throwing the dinner party. I wanted to see that future.
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I think the dream will never die, but it might go underground for another turn.Problem was that broadly there's two categories to compete in. "Superior product" , and "cheaper". the last round of artificial meat was neither.I genuinely believe that eventually we'll have a proper "biological revolution". much like many inorganic technical…
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You're already likely eating bugs if the ingredient list features 'animal proteins'. I once tried a croquette with locusts and although I'm glad I tried it, I wouldn't eat it again. Beef croquettes and vegetable croquettes are just much better.
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Last I knew they were using single use plastics to grow the "meat" kinda defeats the purpose no?
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I always wondered why they tried to mimic "real" meat rather than just making it its own thing. Gluten free cakes are another example. I suppose you need to first penetrate the market/general consciousness first before inventing a whole novel food.
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Wouldn't you be able to do this with ordinary processed meat today?I remember as a kid, we once ate some kind of filled chicken nugget thing, which would have been pulped chicken glued back together into a pouch. I thought it was pretty tasty, but in hindsight its probably good that I only got to eat it a couple times, because typing it out now it…
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Man, I'm so glad I don't trade stocks.I was so convinced that these meatless meats were going to be the next big thing.One thing I think they missed out on was getting to 'close enough' and 'much cheaper' and then just pivoting.Like, why stay with simulating the 5 or so animals we harvest? Just go off and make up new ones!Like, here's a jackalope…
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Well tons of people already eat bugs. Also lots of bugs have meat just like crabs or shrimp, since they're all related.
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There are plenty of animals that only eat plants. We are the only animal consciously eating other animals we know we have mistreated, while we also know we do fine on plants alone. And both lab grown meat and plant based alternatieves have the possibility of being cheaper than "normal" meat. When it's cheaper and tastes good it will take off.
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Yes, I've tried worms in Africa and grass hoppers on Mexico. Not bad at all and very low carbon footprint for the calories.
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I'm pretty sure it's just the taste of meat that the author didn't like. My half-sister don't eat most meat for taste reasons, and the nausea after tasting beef the author describe sound exactly like her reactions.
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(This reminded me why I stopped reading magazines: they have low information density. They are more creative writing, journaling rather than terse and factual)My take away on the answer to the headline question is:Currently the lab grown meat is too expensive and not good tasting enough to compete with real meat and plant based alternatives exist…
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People have fetishized animals so much that creating synthetic goop in the form of flesh somehow got billions in founding. Omnivores eat meat, even herbivores do it sometimes, get over it.
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And it's so stupid honestly. Why is this making them queasy, but not the slaughterhouses, the industrial farms, the cattle pumped with antibiotics to prevent infections from the open wounds inflicted by their terrible environment, etc. I'd take cells grown in a vat over dead animals everyday.This is such a stupid line, it makes me wonder if this…
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Turns out that nature is a lot more efficient at producing meat; I don’t think this will change for a while, if ever.Bugs for chickens, grasses/grains for cattle and omnivorous pigs are their own kind of bio-reactor…
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Would it make the meat industry more ethical if happy drugs were made available to animals? If I had to choose between a meaningful (even if I didn’t know it when living), blissful unnatural life and none at all, I’d choose the former.It’s the negative affect and suffering (stress, pain, boredom etc) that is the bad part of eating animals.(I…
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I had long given up on lab-grown meat. It started feeling like fusion, always around the corner, but never there (or at least not in an affordable way).What replaced almost all ground beef (except in burgers) for me, was Jackfruit. More specifically, the combination 90% pea protein, 10% jackfruit. Granules that can be rehydrated with boiling water…
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Why eat meat at all is the big question? Impossible and Beyond satisfy the taste and craving without the nastiness.
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I'm a bit surprised that we got disembodied intelligence before we got deathless meat. If you'd told me in the year 2000 that one of these would happen, I'd have put my money on the meat.
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> Then, suddenly, the nausea hit... The problem was not the flavor, not the texture, but the knowing. The Knowing. Knowing about the fat tank, about the sticky white substance...I feel like squeamish people are probably not the best ones to write about novel meat products...
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it is sad how the lobbying of old evil industries like tobacco and animal-killing can convince the politicians and the public to outlaw and demonize their less-evil competition like vaping and lab-grown meat to make sure to hold on to the status quo.but why write more than 7000 words to communicate a simple point (lab-grown meat was promised 1-2…