From the perspective of Jewish law, lab-grown meat poses several novel questions, most obviously if it’s kosher. The short answer is yes, but the details are a bit more complex.

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For one, the animal from which the cells are harvested must be a kosher animal. Cultured pork would not be considered kosher, even though the meat didn’t grow inside a pig, because the original cells came from a unkosher animal.

The other central question posed by synthetic meat is whether Jewish law considers it actual meat. This matters for Jews who observe laws about eating meat and dairy products together. If Jewish law doesn’t consider cultivated beef to be meat, then it should be permitted to eat it with cheese.

Rabbis are divided on this question. In 2022, the Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that a handful of Israeli rabbis had ruled that since fertilized chicken eggs and pre-embryonic cow cells are not considered meat, the meat products derived from them in a laboratory should not be considered meat either. As a result, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be eaten with dairy. “Despite the end product’s external similarity to meat products, it is no different in essence to the plant-based meat substitutes on the market,” the rabbis said.

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