Meet the new meat: tissue engineered skeletal muscle

Contemporary large-scale farming and transportation of livestock brings along a high risk of infectious animal diseases and environmental burden through greenhouse gas emission. A new approach to produce meat and thereby reducing these risks is found in tissue engineering of skeletal muscle. This review discusses the requirements that need to be met to increase the feasibility of meat production in vitro, which include finding an appropriate stem cell source and being able to grow them in a three-dimensional environment inside a bioreactor, providing essential cues for proliferation and differentiation.