Getting those cells right is a make-or-break issue for the cultured meat industry. Start with the wrong cells and your vat full of would-be-burgers can very quickly turn into a sludge of proto-meat soup. Solve that problem and you’ve still got to work out how to grow those cells at a cost close to conventional meat and then build a whole production process to reliably brew up thousands of tonnes of meat a year. Distilling the essence of an animal into a slice of cells no bigger than a fingertip is a colossal challenge. So far, no one has managed to crack it.
Source: The hunt for the master cow that will feed the world | WIRED UK