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The Clone Bone Conundrum: If Lab-Grown Meat is 'Cruelty-Free,' Is It Still Vegan?

  • Writer: Emanuele Bortolotto
    Emanuele Bortolotto
  • Jul 26, 2025
  • 8 min read

Updated: Sep 7, 2025



It’s a late Saturday night here in Helsinki, that quiet, contemplative hour when the city is bathed in the strange, ethereal twilight of a Nordic summer. The future feels particularly close in a place like this. Helsinki is a hub of design and technology, a city always looking forward. This futuristic mood got me thinking about the future of our food. I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole of scientific articles and tech-bro manifestos about a concept that sounds like it was ripped straight from a science fiction novel: lab-grown meat. 🧪

Also known as cultured meat, cellular meat, or my personal favorite, "the clone bone," this is the idea of growing actual animal meat in a big, shiny, stainless-steel tank, without ever having to raise or slaughter an animal. The proponents of this technology claim it is the ultimate solution: the taste and texture of meat, but with none of the cruelty or environmental devastation. They promise a world where we can have our steak and eat it too, with a perfectly clear conscience.

This all sounds wonderful, a true techno-utopian dream. But it led me to a question so philosophically thorny, so complex, that it is currently threatening to tear the vegan community in two. The question is this: If lab-grown meat is cruelty-free, is it still vegan?


How to Build a Burger in a Bucket: A Simpleton's Guide to Cellular Agriculture


Before I could possibly understand the ethical debate, I first had to get my head around the frankly bizarre science of how this stuff is made. As an investigator, I believe in understanding the process. So, how do you grow a chicken nugget in a lab?

I’ve read the scientific papers, and it seems to boil down to a process that is part biology, part engineering, and part what looks to an outsider like some kind of dark magic. 🪄

  1. The Biopsy (The Polite Vampire Phase): First, scientists take a tiny sample of stem cells from a living animal. This is usually done with a biopsy, a process that is about as invasive as a standard blood test. They can get all the cells they need from a single, living, happy donor animal. Let’s say, a cow named Daisy. 🐮

  2. The Proliferation (The Cell Rave): They put Daisy’s cells into a big, warm, soupy machine called a bioreactor. This machine is basically a luxury, all-inclusive resort for cells. The scientists provide a delicious, nutrient-rich liquid called a "growth medium," which contains all the proteins, vitamins, and sugars the cells need to thrive. The cells, thinking they are still in a cow and having a wonderful time, begin to multiply. And multiply. And multiply.

  3. The Differentiation (The 'Choose Your Destiny' Phase): Once they have a huge mass of cells, the scientists change the recipe of the nutrient soup. They tweak the signals to tell the undifferentiated stem cells what to become. "You," they say, "shall be a muscle cell. And you, you shall be a fat cell."

  4. The Assembly (The Burger-Building Phase): These new muscle and fat cells are then encouraged to grow on a special, edible "scaffolding" that helps them organize into the fibrous structure of actual meat. The result is a mass of real animal muscle and fat tissue that has never been part of a living, breathing animal with a central nervous system. It is, biologically, meat. But it has never known a farm, a slaughterhouse, or fear.

This all sounds wonderfully clean and futuristic. But my investigation uncovered a very large, very problematic skeleton in the closet of this technology.


The Fetal Bovine Serum Problem


For years, the gold-standard "growth medium," the magic soup used to feed the cells, was a substance called Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS). FBS is a nutrient-rich serum that is, as the name suggests, harvested from the blood of cow fetuses. It is a byproduct of the dairy and beef industry, taken from pregnant cows at the time of slaughter.

I'm going to be very clear here. Any lab-grown meat that is produced using FBS is 100%, unequivocally, not vegan or cruelty-free. 🛑 It is a process directly tied to the slaughter of both a cow and her unborn calf. For years, this was the dirty secret of the cellular agriculture industry and a complete non-starter for any ethical vegan.

However, the industry knows this is a catastrophic PR and ethical problem. The race has been on for years to develop a completely plant-based growth medium that is just as effective as FBS. The good news is that dozens of companies have now cracked this code, creating powerful, effective serums from things like algae and fermented plants. Any serious lab-meat company today is using, or is on the verge of using, a completely animal-free growth medium. So, for the rest of this investigation, we will assume we are talking about the modern, FBS-free version of the technology.


The Great Schism: A Vegan Civil War ⚔️


With the FBS problem solved, we can finally return to our core question. We have a piece of meat, grown from a harmless biopsy, in a plant-based soup. Is this vegan? My investigation revealed that the vegan community is deeply, passionately, and ferociously divided on this issue. There are two main warring factions.


The Abolitionist Position: "Not in a Million Years. It's an Abomination."


This is the argument from the ethical purists. For them, veganism is not just about reducing suffering; it's about a fundamental shift in our relationship with animals. It's about the complete abolition of the idea that animals are resources for us to use.

  • It Still Uses the Animal: Their argument is that the process, by definition, still requires the use of a donor animal. The biopsy, no matter how harmless, is still a violation of that animal's bodily autonomy. It is still treating the animal as a resource, a raw material for a product.

  • It Reinforces the "Meat" Paradigm: This is a more philosophical point. They argue that by creating a high-tech replica of a chicken nugget, we are just reinforcing the cultural idea that a chicken nugget is a desirable thing to eat. It doesn't challenge our obsession with eating meat; it just sanitizes it. The goal, for them, is for people to fall in love with plants, not to find a guilt-free way to eat a steak.

  • The "Yuck" Factor: This is the emotional argument. For many people who have been vegan for a long time, the idea of eating meat—any meat, regardless of its origin—is just viscerally disgusting. It is the flesh of an animal, and the thought of consuming it is a taboo they have no desire to break.


The Pragmatist Position: "Yes! It's the Best Hope We've Got."


This is the argument from the utilitarians, the ones who are focused on the practical consequences. For them, the goal of veganism is to reduce the maximum amount of suffering in the world.

  • Harm Reduction: This is their core argument. They look at the 80 billion land animals that are slaughtered for food each year and see lab-grown meat as the single most powerful tool for ending that holocaust of suffering. If you can give the global population a burger that tastes the same but involves zero slaughter, you will save more animals than a hundred years of leafleting could ever hope to achieve.

  • "Possible and Practicable": They point directly to the definition of veganism. If the goal is to reduce harm "as far as is possible and practicable," then supporting a technology that could end factory farming is the most vegan thing a person could possibly do. They argue that the abolitionist's focus on the purity of a single biopsy is a perfect example of letting the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good."

  • Environmental Salvation: They also point to the massive environmental benefits. Lab-grown meat is projected to use up to 99% less land and 96% less water than conventional beef, while producing a fraction of the greenhouse gases.


Questions from the Internet



Questions from the Internet: "Okay, but will it actually taste the same?"


This is the practical question on everyone's mind. And the answer is, that is the entire point. The goal of this multi-billion dollar industry is to create a product that is bio-identical to the real thing. My research into the current state of the technology shows that for simpler, processed products like burgers, sausages, and nuggets, they are already incredibly close. Early taste tests have fooled many experts. The bigger challenge, the "holy grail" of the industry, is recreating the complex structure of a whole-cut steak, with its intricate mix of muscle, fat, and connective tissue. That is a much harder engineering problem, but one they are working feverishly to solve. 🥩


Questions from the Internet: "Is it healthier or just... weirder?"


This is a fascinating area. Cultured meat has the potential to be significantly healthier than conventional meat.

  • No Contaminants: It's grown in a sterile environment, so it will be free from fecal contamination (like E. coli or salmonella) and the growth hormones and antibiotics that are rampant in industrial farming.

  • Tunable Nutrition: Scientists can literally control the nutritional profile of the meat. They can engineer a steak to be lower in saturated fat and higher in healthy unsaturated fats. They could even, theoretically, add extra vitamins.

    However, it is still, on a cellular level, meat. It will still contain cholesterol and heme iron. It is not a health food in the way a lentil is. It's simply a cleaner, safer, and potentially less artery-clogging version of a familiar product.


Internal Link Break!


This entire, ferocious debate hinges on the core definition of what it means to be vegan. Is it an ethical philosophy about personal purity and the abolition of use, or is it a pragmatic strategy for harm reduction? To understand the foundational philosophy that created this schism, you must read my investigation: [What Is Ethical Veganism?]


The Conclusion: A Test of Your Vegan Philosophy


So, after this journey to the weird and wonderful frontiers of food science, is lab-grown meat vegan?

My investigation leads me to a clear and deeply unsatisfying conclusion: it depends. It depends entirely on what you believe the ultimate purpose of veganism is. There is no single, easy answer, because vegans themselves are not a monolith.

  • If you are an abolitionist vegan, who believes that animals have a fundamental right not to be used as a resource in any capacity, then the answer is no. The use of a donor animal for starter cells, no matter how harmless, is a violation of this principle.

  • If you are a pragmatic/utilitarian vegan, who believes the goal is to reduce the maximum amount of suffering in the world, then the answer is a resounding yes. It is the most powerful tool ever conceived for achieving that goal.

Lab-grown meat, I have realized, is a kind of litmus test. It forces a person to ask themselves, "What am I actually trying to achieve with my choices?" Is the goal personal moral purity? Or is it the greatest good for the greatest number? The clone bone conundrum doesn't give us an answer; it just reveals who we are. And that, I think, is pretty fascinating. 🤔

Of course, this whole technological marvel is an attempt to replicate the savory taste of meat. But what if you could achieve that same depth of flavor with just plants? I investigated the science of savoriness right here: [The Art of Umami: How to Make Your Vegan Dishes Shockingly Savory].


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