Restaurant quality?

Laboratory-grown meat offers a promising alternative for meeting global protein demand, as it reduces the environmental impact of animal husbandry and eliminates the need for animal transport and slaughter.

Global competition is intensifying

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2025/12-2026.01

One of the biggest challenges so far has been to ensure that the meat produced this way isn’t just protein mass, but actually resembles beef in texture and structure. Researchers at ETH Zurich have achieved a breakthrough in this area, with a new method that enables them to produce thicker and more realistic muscle tissue. The research team worked with so-called myoblast cells, which form muscle fibres. These weren’t extracted from living animals, but from traditional beef cuts such as sirloin, rump, cheek or tenderloin. ETH’s new process creates a significantly thicker and more realistic tissue that is closer to consumer expectations. Researchers have only been able to produce a few grams of meat, so there is still a long way to go before it can be put on the market.