Cultivated meat has already demonstrated that it is possible to grow meat without harming the animal. The harder question is what happens when we try to move from laboratory-scale production to something capable of supplying a meaningful share of the food system: industrial scale.
Scaling cultivated meat is not simply a matter of building a larger bioreactor. It requires several technologies to work together: reliable cell lines, affordable culture media, efficient bioreactors, and tightly controlled production processes. Recent scientific reviews suggest that progress in each of these areas is being made, but also that none can be considered independently of the others.
For cultivated meat to become more than a premium niche product, the entire production system needs to become more efficient, reproducible and economical.
At a basic level, cultivated meat production involves taking animal cells, expanding them in a nutrient-rich medium, and assembling those cells into a food product. This sounds straightforward at laboratory scale. Industrial production is a different problem.
Increasing production volume means that cells must continue growing efficiently while environmental conditions such as nutrients, oxygen, pH and other culture parameters remain controlled. At the same time, the materials supporting the cells have to be available in sufficiently large quantities and at food-grade costs.
From recent scientific research the conclusion is always the same: cultivated meat will scale successfully only when cell biology, media and bioprocessing are designed as an integrated manufacturing system.
Every cultivated meat production process begins with cells. That makes the choice and development of cell lines one of the foundations of scalability.
The current research landscape includes several potential cell sources, including muscle satellite cells, myoblasts, embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and pre-adipocytes (see more here). Each has different characteristics, and the challenge is to find cells that can proliferate efficiently while retaining the ability to differentiate into the tissues required for the final product.
For industrial production, cells need to do more than simply grow. They need to grow reliably, repeatedly and at high density. A production system also benefits from cells that can be expanded extensively without losing the characteristics required for meat production.
This is one reason cell-line development is so important to scale-up. If production continually depends on obtaining fresh cells from animal tissue, manufacturing becomes more complicated and less efficient.
In other words, the first question in scaling cultivated meat is not necessarily “How big should the bioreactor be?”. It is: “Can the cells themselves perform reliably enough to justify a much larger production system?”.
Cells cannot grow without the right nutrients and signalling molecules. Culture media typically contains components such as glucose, amino acids, vitamins, inorganic salts and growth factors (read more here). Additional components can be needed to support proliferation, differentiation and cell survival.
The problem is that ingredients that work well in laboratory research can become extremely expensive when required in industrial quantities. This creates a major opportunity: develop media that works as well as possible while relying on affordable, scalable ingredients. The objective is not simply to make media cheaper, but to maintain the cell growth and functionality needed for production.
One particularly interesting approach comes from the idea of using agricultural side-streams as inputs for cultivated meat. Agricultural processing generates large quantities of materials that are not necessarily used as the primary food product. These materials can contain proteins, amino acids, polysaccharides and other potentially useful compounds.
Research is exploring whether agricultural side-streams could be incorporated into cultivated meat production, particularly as ingredients for cell media or scaffolding. Examples include protein materials derived from rapeseed, soybean, peanut, and other agricultural processing streams. Experimental work has already demonstrated cell growth using such materials. For instance, a rapeseed protein isolate used in serum-free media supported bovine satellite-cell growth and produced more population doublings than the albumin-containing comparison medium.
Once suitable cells and media are available, they need somewhere to grow. This is where bioreactor engineering becomes central.
Laboratory experiments can be performed in relatively small culture vessels where researchers can closely control the environment. Industrial cultivation requires much greater volumes while the fundamental objective is the same: create an environment in which large numbers of cells can grow while providing sufficient nutrients and oxygen and removing metabolic waste.
But increasing vessel size introduces engineering challenges. A larger system is not simply a laboratory vessel multiplied in size. Fluid movement, oxygen transfer, mixing, heat transfer and other physical conditions can change as scale increases. The production system therefore has to be engineered around the biological requirements of the cells.
This is why bioreactor development and cell-line development cannot be separated. A cell that grows well under laboratory conditions may not necessarily behave identically when subjected to the physical environment of a much larger production process. The goal is therefore high-density cultivation with reliable environmental control, rather than volume for its own sake.
Growing large numbers of cells is only part of the challenge. A steak is not simply a container filled with muscle cells. Meat has structure, texture and organisation. Creating products that reproduce more complex physical characteristics therefore requires tissue-engineering strategies in addition to cell expansion. This is where scaffolds enter the picture (you can find more here).
Scaffolds provide a physical environment that can support cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation. They can also help create three-dimensional structures and contribute to the texture of the final product. The type of scaffold required depends on the product.
For less structured products, extensive three-dimensional organisation may not be necessary. More complex whole-cut products present a much greater engineering challenge because cells need to be organised into structures that resemble animal tissue.
The agricultural side-stream concept becomes particularly interesting when applied to scaffolds. Plant-based agricultural residues can contain proteins and polysaccharides that can potentially be converted into structures for cell growth.
The attraction is obvious: instead of relying exclusively on expensive, highly processed materials, cultivated meat could potentially make use of abundant food and agricultural processing streams. But the scaffold has to do several jobs simultaneously. It must support the cells, provide appropriate physical properties, be compatible with food production and ideally be edible or biodegradable. It also needs to avoid negatively affecting the taste, colour, nutrition or cooking properties of the final product.
This is another example of why scale-up is a systems problem. A scaffold can work perfectly from a biological perspective and still be unsuitable for commercial production if it is too expensive, difficult to manufacture, inconsistent between batches or incompatible with the final food.
Perhaps the most important message is that there is no single technology that will “solve” cultivated meat scale-up. Cell lines + culture media + scaffolds + bioreactors need to work together. Improving only one of them may not be enough.
Imagine developing a cell line that grows extremely rapidly but requires expensive growth factors. The cells may be biologically impressive, but the process could remain economically unattractive. Or imagine developing an inexpensive culture medium that supports cell growth but using a bioreactor that cannot maintain the required conditions at high density. The same principle applies to scaffolds. A scaffold might produce excellent tissue structure but be too expensive or difficult to manufacture in the quantities required.
Successful scale-up therefore means optimising the entire production chain rather than individual components in isolation.
As production becomes larger, controlling the process manually becomes increasingly difficult. Thus automation and process control are important components of the transition from laboratory research to industrial production.
A commercial production system needs reproducibility. The same process should produce a consistent result from one production run to another. That requires control over the biological and physical environment, as well as monitoring of the process. This is particularly important because cultivated meat involves living cells. Their behaviour can change in response to their environment, meaning that manufacturing conditions need to be carefully controlled.
The objective is therefore not simply to produce more cells, but to develop a repeatable manufacturing process capable of producing food with consistent characteristics.
There is another aspect of scale that can be easy to overlook: where the raw materials come from. A laboratory might use small quantities of specialised ingredients without worrying about whether millions of kilograms of them could be supplied economically. An industrial cultivated meat facility cannot.
In other words, the future cultivated meat factory may depend not only on biotechnology, but also on food processing, agriculture and supply-chain engineering.
The industry needs to move from demonstrating individual technologies toward integrating them into complete production systems. That means developing cell lines that are suitable for manufacturing, not just laboratory experiments. It means creating culture media that can be purchased and produced economically at very large volumes. It means designing scaffolds that provide the right biological and physical environment without becoming a major cost or manufacturing bottleneck. And it means building bioreactors and process-control systems that can maintain productive cell cultures at much higher densities. Finally, all of these components have to work together.
The challenge is substantial, but it is also increasingly well defined. The recent literature is no longer asking only whether animal cells can be cultivated into meat. It is increasingly focused on how the technology can be engineered into a reliable, affordable and scalable food-production system. Because scaling cultivated meat means scaling the entire system.
Kim, S.; Park, K.-H.; Park, S.-J.; Park, Y.-G.; Moon, S.-H. Cultivated meat and the future of food systems: Promise, progress, and challenges. Food Science & Nutrition, 2026, 14, 4, e71725. https://doi.org/10.1002/fsn3.71725
Charteris, C.; le Coutre, J. Cultivated meat meets upcycling: Unlocking the potential of agricultural side-streams. Future Foods, 2025, 12, 100726. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fufo.2025.100726
Kim, S.; Jeong, Y.; Jo, H.; Park, Y.-G.; Moon, S.-H. Cultured meat: Advances in stem cell biology, tissue engineering, and bioprocess optimisation for scalable and sustainable production—a review. International Journal of Food Science and Technology, 2025, 60, 2, vvaf220. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijfood/vvaf220
Xie, Y.; Ding, S.; Wang, J.; Li, X.; Guo, R.; Tang, C.; Wang, C.; Zhou, G.; Li, C. Technological advances and the challenges for large-scale cultured meat production. Annual Review of Food Science and Technology, 2026, 17, 417–438. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-food-053124-085815
Gu, H.; Kong, Y.; Huang, D.; Wang, Y.; Raghavan, V.; Wang, J. Scaling cultured meat: Challenges and solutions for affordable mass production. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 2025, 24, 4, e70221. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.70221
Cultivated meat has already shown that meat can be grown from animal cells without harming the animal. The next challenge is much bigger: moving from small laboratory production to an industrial scale that could supply a meaningful amount of food.
Scaling up is not simply about building a bigger bioreactor. Reliable cells, affordable nutrients, efficient bioreactors and well-controlled production processes all need to work together. For cultivated meat to move beyond a premium niche product, the entire system must become more efficient, consistent and economical.
At its simplest, cultivated meat production involves taking animal cells, growing them in a nutrient-rich environment and turning them into a food product. This can be relatively straightforward at laboratory scale, but producing much larger quantities brings new challenges.
As production increases, cells must continue to grow efficiently while conditions such as nutrients, oxygen and pH remain carefully controlled. At the same time, all the materials needed for production must be available in large quantities and at prices suitable for food production.
This means that successful scale-up depends on cell biology, culture media and production technology being developed together as one manufacturing system.
Every cultivated meat process starts with cells. Choosing and developing suitable cell lines is therefore one of the foundations of large-scale production.
Researchers are studying several types of cells that could be used to produce muscle and fat. Different cell types have different advantages, but for industrial production they must be able to grow efficiently while still developing into the tissues needed for the final food.
Importantly, cells need to grow not only quickly, but also reliably, repeatedly and at high density. They should also be capable of being expanded for long periods without losing the characteristics needed for meat production.
If manufacturers constantly need to obtain fresh cells from animal tissue, production becomes more complicated and less efficient. So before asking how large a bioreactor should be, there is another important question: can the cells themselves perform reliably enough at large scale?
Cells need nutrients and other substances to grow. Culture media typically provides sugars, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and other components that support cell growth, development and survival.
Many ingredients commonly used in laboratories, however, are expensive when needed in industrial quantities. The challenge is therefore to create affordable media without compromising the growth and quality of the cells.
One possible solution is to use side-streams from agriculture and food processing. These materials can contain useful proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates and other compounds. Researchers are investigating whether ingredients derived from crops such as rapeseed, soybean or peanut could be used in culture media or other parts of cultivated meat production.
Experiments have already shown promising results. For example, protein isolated from rapeseed has successfully supported the growth of bovine cells in serum-free culture media.
Once suitable cells and culture media are available, the cells need an environment in which they can grow. This is the role of the bioreactor.
In the laboratory, researchers can grow cells in small vessels where conditions are relatively easy to control. At industrial scale, much larger volumes are required while cells still need enough nutrients and oxygen and their metabolic waste needs to be removed.
Simply making the vessel larger does not solve the problem. Mixing, oxygen supply, temperature and fluid movement can all change as the size of the system increases. Bioreactors therefore have to be designed around the needs of the cells.
This is also why cell development and bioreactor design are closely connected. Cells that perform well in a small laboratory system may respond differently to the conditions inside a much larger production environment. The goal is not simply to create the largest possible vessel, but to grow large numbers of cells efficiently under stable and controlled conditions.
Producing large numbers of cells is only part of the process. Meat also has structure, texture and organisation. More complex cultivated meat products therefore require ways of organising cells into tissue-like structures.
Scaffolds can provide a physical structure on which cells attach, grow and develop. Their importance depends on the type of product being produced. Less structured products may require relatively simple solutions, while whole-cut products are more challenging because the cells need to form structures that resemble animal tissue.
Agricultural side-streams could also provide materials for these scaffolds. Plant-based residues can contain proteins and carbohydrates that may be suitable for creating structures that support cell growth.
However, a successful scaffold must meet several requirements at once. It needs to support the cells, have suitable physical properties and be compatible with food production. Ideally, it should also be edible or biodegradable and should not negatively affect the taste, colour, nutritional value or cooking properties of the final food.
A scaffold can therefore work very well biologically but still be unsuitable for industrial production if it is too expensive, difficult to manufacture or inconsistent.
There is no single technology that can solve the challenge of scaling cultivated meat. Cell lines, culture media, scaffolds and bioreactors all need to work together.
A cell line might grow very quickly but require expensive ingredients. An affordable culture medium might support cells well, but the bioreactor may struggle to maintain the right conditions when cell density increases. Similarly, a scaffold might create excellent tissue structure but be too expensive to produce in large quantities.
Successful scale-up therefore requires optimisation of the entire production chain rather than focusing on individual technologies separately.
As production grows, controlling every part of the process manually becomes increasingly difficult. Automation and process monitoring therefore become important when moving from laboratory research to industrial manufacturing.
Commercial production needs to be reproducible. The same process should deliver a consistent product from one production run to another. Because cultivated meat uses living cells that respond to changes in their environment, production conditions need to be carefully monitored and controlled.
The goal is therefore not simply to grow more cells, but to create a reliable manufacturing process that consistently produces food with the required characteristics.
Large-scale production also depends on where all the necessary materials come from. A laboratory can use small quantities of specialised ingredients without considering whether they could be supplied economically in enormous amounts. An industrial facility cannot.
For this reason, scaling cultivated meat is not only a biotechnology challenge. It also depends on agriculture, food processing and efficient supply chains capable of providing the necessary materials at industrial scale.
The next step for cultivated meat is to move from demonstrating individual technologies to combining them into complete production systems.
This means developing cell lines suitable for manufacturing, affordable culture media that can be produced in large volumes, and scaffolds that provide the right environment without becoming too expensive or difficult to manufacture. It also means designing bioreactors and control systems that can support large numbers of cells efficiently and consistently.
The challenge is substantial, but it is becoming increasingly clear what needs to be solved. Research is moving beyond the question of whether meat can be grown from animal cells and focusing increasingly on how it can be produced reliably, affordably and at industrial scale.
Ultimately, scaling cultivated meat means scaling the entire system.
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