Yes, most ‘lab-grown’ tech companies are working to produce animal-derived agricultural products (‘meat’, ‘leather’, ‘milk’, ‘eggs’ etc.). But, there’s a whole world of innovation in other areas. 

That is good news for animals and the plant-based community. It helps make ‘lab-grown’ an acceptable idea. 

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Earlier this year, Pandora, the world’s largest jewelry company, announced that, going forward, it would only use lab-created diamonds, and not mined diamonds.

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Researchers at MIT in America have grown structures of wood-like plants in their laboratories—’growing a table’ as the future of forestry and construction materials.

That’s a long way off yet, but the research is heading that way. And it may end the massive environmental impact of forestry.

Lab-grown technologies also have the potential to achieve the 3Rs, the holy grail of medical research campaigning: improving human health at the same time as reducing or ending animal models of experimentation and vivisection.

For example, researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed a technology using lab-grown mini-scaffolding capable of growing human tissue and bone.

It could revolutionise testing by producing ‘bone on a chip’ resources, and so reduce the need for testing on animals—perhaps, we hope, altogether.

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