The chicken before me had neither lived nor died, but it did look really tasty.
Five stories up, in a sunny event space tucked away in New York City’s Little Italy earlier this month, chefs had been busy preparing chicken lo mein noodles, empanadas, and shawarma. But the poultry that went into these dishes hadn’t come from a farm — it was grown from animal cells in a lab. Local restaurateurs and chefs mingling around the room had been invited to sample the dishes by Upside Foods, a leading brand in the lab-grown meat business. This was essentially a big pitch meeting: Upside Foods is working on launching a new product called “shreds” — similar to boneless, skinless, shredded chicken meat — and hoping to convince restaurants to buy it once it hits the market.
A few attendees, according to Upside Foods Chief Operating Officer Amy Chen, confessed they were nervous to try the lab-grown chicken, which is genetically identical to regular chicken but grown in a bioreactor. “I think for consumers, the idea of cultivated meat is quite different,” Chen said,... Read more
