• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, March 16, 2017

Your first reaction to the concept of lab-grown chicken and duck may be “yuck,” but read on. It’s coming. And it will not only be better for the environment — and individual members of the species themselves — it also tastes … well, good enough to eat again, at least at this point.

San Leandro, Calif.-based Memphis Meats held a tasting in San Francisco Tuesday night and yesterday formally announced “the world's first chicken produced without the animal” on its home page.

“This is a historic moment for the clean meat movement,” co-founder and CEO Uma Valeti said in a statement. “Chicken and duck are at the center of the table in so many cultures around the world, but the way conventional poultry is raised creates huge problems for the environment, animal welfare, and human health. It is also inefficient. We aim to produce meat in a better way, so that it is delicious, affordable and sustainable.”

“And the product pretty much tastes like chicken, according to people who were offered samples Tuesday in San Francisco, before Memphis Meats Inc.’s formal unveiling on Wednesday,” writes Jacob Bunge for the Wall Street Journal. Bunge was at the event Tuesday and his coverage is widely cited, including by CEO Valeti in a blog post. 

“Scientists, startups and animal-welfare activists believe the new product could help to revolutionize the roughly $200 billion U.S. meat industry. Their goal: Replace billions of cattle, hogs and chickens with animal meat they say can be grown more efficiently and humanely in stainless-steel bioreactor tanks,” Bunge continues.

“Some who sampled the strip — breaded, deep-fried and spongier than a whole chicken breast — said it nearly nailed the flavor of the traditional variety. Their verdict: They would eat it again,” Bunge elaborates deeper in the story.

The “company released a series of gourmet photos showing the meat prepared as southern-fried chicken and duck à l'orange. The images look indistinguishable from offerings you might expect to see in a high-end restaurant,” writes Amanda Kooser for CNET.

But don’t go texting an order to Vinnie the butcher. It will be 2021 before Memphis Meats expects to be in the meat case, not to mention that right now it costs almost $9,000 a pound to produce. But that’s “half of what it cost the company to make a cultured meatball a year ago. Eventually Memphis Meats hopes to sell its cultured meat at a comparable price to supermarket chicken (in the $3-4/lb. range) by 2021,” reports Katherine Martinko for TreeHugger.

“So how is this chicken made? Memphis Meats’ in-house senior scientist Eric Schulze explained the process to Eater in broad strokes,” writes Daniela Galarza.

“We start by harvesting cells from high-quality, living chickens that might otherwise go into conventional meat,” Schulze told Galarza. “The chickens are not killed in the process. We look for cells that have potential to renew, put them in an environment where they can grow and feed them water and nutrients — vitamins, minerals, proteins, sugars — and let them grow.” 

In about four to six weeks, those cells have developed into something ready for the deep fryer, wok or grill.

“Poultry is widely consumed throughout the world. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture projects consumers will eat 91.7 lbs. of chicken in 2017, up from about 90 lbs. in 2016. And China leads the world in consumption of duck … more than 6 billion lbs. per year,” points out Erica Shaffer in Meat + Poultry. “Cultured meat startups such as Memphis Meats, Modern Meadow Inc. [actually, “leather re-imagined”] and Mosa Meat aim to bring cultured meat to the masses. The products are grown using stem cells from cows, pigs and chickens.”

“So what’s the point? Well, poultry products are great,” CEO Valenti blogged yesterday. “They’re delicious, they have nutritional benefits and they play a crucial role in so many cultures around the world. They are the most consumed meat in the U.S., and soon will be the most consumed meat in the world. In fact, Americans spend roughly $90 billion per year — just on chicken.”

To re-coin a phrase, that ain’t clean-meat scratch.