note: This material is copied from a blog post from March 15, 2017, which can be additionally viewed here: https://elliot-swartz.squarespace.com/science-related/invitromeat. IntroductionThe idea of meat consumption without the need of animals has been around for a long time.  Winston Churchill famously mentioned the concept in his 1932 compilation Thoughts and Adventures [1] and “carniculture” was mentioned in the old science fiction novel Space Viking [2].  More recently, scientists have realized that perhaps by utilizing traditional cell culture techniques, it would be possible to grow muscle cells (i.e. meat) in vitro for consumption.  This realization was culminated in 2013 with the presentation and consumption of the world’s first in vitro burger created by Mark Post and funded by Sergey Brin with a cool price tag of $330,000 (which was actually a bit mis-represented and included cost of setting up the lab) [3, 4].  The event was purposefully done to raise awareness for the strategy and has since spawned 4 [known] companies pursuing the idea – Dutch-based Mosa Meats (Mark Post’s company), U.S.-based Memphis Meats [5], Israel-based Supermeat [6], and Japan-based Shojinmeat [7].