The first mouthful of “cultivated” meat is both remarkable and dull. In a homely kitchen at the California headquarters of Eat Just, a start-up, a playing-card-sized slice of meat has been glazed and grilled. It is served with a sweet-potato puree, maitake mushrooms and some pickled peppers. The meal is remarkable because the meat was grown in a lab, rather than on an animal. It is mundane because the texture, taste, look and smell of the meat is almost identical to that of chicken. And that, of course, is the point.

The cultivated-meat business hopes this experience will become more common. In June, Eat Just and Upside Foods, another California start-up, became the first two companies to win regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat in America. A handful of firms already do so in Singapore, which was the first country to permit the sale of the stuff in 2020. A herd of rivals is stampeding after them. All told, around 160 firms are trying to bring cultivated meats to market.