On August 5, 2013, Mark Post, a professor at Maastricht University, unveiled the world's first lab-grown burger at Riverside Studios in London. Funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a cost of $330,000, the five-ounce patty was cultivated from cattle stem cells using fetal bovine serum. Tasters Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow, and Austrian nutrition scientist Hanni Rützler found the burger had texture but lacked fat and flavor, with Schonwald comparing it to a "Boca Burger" and Rützler noting its blandness.

The event sparked a global gold rush, launching 140 companies across six continents and attracting $3 billion in investment. Startups like Upside Foods promised to make meat a "force of good," while Vow created a woolly-mammoth meatball from fossil DNA. Proponents claimed cellular agriculture would reduce greenhouse gases, land use, and antibiotic resistance.

However, over a decade later, the revolution has stalled. Scaling production remains prohibitively expensive, regulatory hurdles persist, and consumer acceptance is uncertain. The industry has yet to deliver affordable, mass-market products, leaving the initial promise of a sustainable meat alternative largely unfulfilled.