What happened in this Energy story?

Cultivated meat’s $3bn boom has contracted to one global retail store, while North Carolina hosts a concentrated revival: $30m from Bezos, Believer Meats claiming 9.5m kilos of annual chicken output and an FDA no-questions letter.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Mark Post** unveiled his €250,000 lab-cultivated beef patty on 5 August 2013 after two years of work; funded by Sergey Brin, the 140g burger drew praise for its texture but was described by taster Hanni Rützler as bland and needing improvement.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Cultivated meat** attracted 140 companies across six continents and about $3bn in investment after the 2013 spectacle; advocates promised lower emissions and a slower spread of zoonotic disease, while RethinkX predicted a 70% cut in US beef demand by 2030.

Lab-grown meat was supposed to save the world. What happened? — SkimNews

By The Guardian Environment · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-11-05

Get the Energy newsletter

Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.

Mark Post unveiled his €250,000 lab-cultivated beef patty on 5 August 2013 after two years of work; funded by Sergey Brin, the 140g burger drew praise for its texture but was described by taster Hanni Rützler as bland and needing improvement.
Cultivated meat attracted 140 companies across six continents and about $3bn in investment after the 2013 spectacle; advocates promised lower emissions and a slower spread of zoonotic disease, while RethinkX predicted a 70% cut in US beef demand by 2030.
Cultivated meat investment peaked in 2021 before falling to $177m globally in 2023; obstacles included costly facilities, high energy use, scale and price barriers, a shortage of skilled workers and FDA/USDA inspections.
Florida and six other states passed laws banning cultivated-meat sales, production or both; Florida governor Ron DeSantis made the signing a media event, declaring, “Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere.”
GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken shreds are sold at Huber’s Butchery in Singapore, the only store in the world where cultivated meat is available for purchase.
Bezos committed $30m through his Earth Fund in May 2024 to establish the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein at North Carolina State University, cementing North Carolina as a new global center for cultivated meat.
Believer Meats broke ground on a 200,000-square-foot plant in Wilson, North Carolina, which the company said could produce 9.5m kilos of cultivated chicken per year; in September 2025, it received an FDA “no questions” letter after the agency encountered no safety concerns in its inspection.

Why it matters: For consumers, cultivated meat sales remain confined to one store worldwide. North Carolina is the counterweight: $30m from Bezos, a 200,000-square-foot factory and an FDA no-questions letter concentrate the sector’s visible manufacturing push there, while seven state bans and $177m in 2023 investment leave it far from Post’s within-a-decade consumer forecast.