Upside Foods and Good Meat receive green light to “cultivate” chicken meat.

The US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Administration cleared earlier in June the sale of so-called cultivated chicken meat, with two major players on the lab-grown meat market starting mass production immediately.

Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies involved in producing cell-based protein, said in a press release that the regulators were satisfied with the product safety, which will be subject to regular checks from now on. 

Both companies are already in negotiations with restaurants and supermarkets in the United States.

Curious customers will be encouraged to try their products.

Cultivated meat is grown is created in bioreactors using real animal cells and is advertised as a more humane approach to meat consumption that doesn’t require to slaughter or harm animals.

The price of lab-grown chicken meat was not disclosed, which means the producers will have to walk into an unchartered market.

Whether consumers will like the taste of artificially grown meat remains to be seen. Visually, it is not much different from natural chicken meat.

Last year, the government cleared the sale of genetically-modified pic sausages in the US.