“The meatball that changed the world.” That was the enthusiastic prediction early last year from Uma Valeti, a cardiologist and now CEO of Memphis Meats, as he admired the freshly cooked meatball arranged gourmet-style on a plate. As a meatball, it definitely had a lot going for it. It was made by specialty chef Dave Anderson, using an Italian recipe. As it cooked in the frying pan, (click here to watch the video) it sizzled and smelled the way a meatball should. And the taste-tester gave it a thumbs-up.

It tastes like chicken. So how is this chicken made? Memphis Meats’ in-house senior scientist Eric Schulze explained the process to Eater in broad strokes. “We start by harvesting sells from high-quality, living chickens that might otherwise go into conventional meat,” he says. “The chickens are not killed in the process. We look for cells that have potential to renew, put them in environment where they can grow and feed them water and nutrients — vitamins, minerals, proteins, sugars — and let them grow.”

San Francisco-based startup Memphis Meats says it has made the world's first lab-grown chicken strips from animal cells. On March 14, Memphis Meats invited a handful of taste-testers to their kitchen to try it. And according to the company, they said it tastes just like chicken. "It is thrilling to introduce the first chicken and duck that didn’t require raising animals. This is a historic moment for the clean meat movement," Memphis Meats' cofounder and CEO, Uma Valeti, said in a press release.

The environment doesn't appreciate our meat obsession. The average meat-eater in the U.S. is responsible for almost twice as much global warming as the average vegetarian, and close to three times that of the average vegan, according to a study (pdf) published this month in the journal Climatic Change.

We can produce the food that people crave without using livestock, pledges Pat Brown founder of the ‘veggie burger that bleeds’.

Australian meat sales plunged 15 per cent due to public "revulsion" over animal cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs, a court has been told. Former agriculture minister Joe Ludwig's lawyers have argued their client's decision to suspend live cattle exports to Indonesia was necessary to protect the wider industry's reputation. Mr Ludwig ordered the suspension in 2011, following a Four Corners investigation.

“Every vegan seems to have their own lightbulb moment when something clicked and they stopped eating animal products,” says Cambridge University archaeologist Dr Pía Spry-Marqués, who committed to a plant-only diet two years ago as she researched the history of pork. “My son was born three years ago and I was nursing him. People looked at me funny for breastfeeding my child, and yet it was fine to drink lattes with cow’s milk, or eat chocolate spread,” she recalls to The Independent.

“What the Health” is the most recent documentary making waves from duo Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, who made “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret” in 2014 — another emotionally charged behind the scenes look at the food industry of today. “What the Health” was released in March 2017 and came to Netflix in June where it has been quickly gaining viewers.

The largest supermarket in the U.S. has a new name in the meat aisle. It just so happens that it’s not made of meat. The plant-based Beyond Burger, made by startup Beyond Meat, began rolling out in more than 600 Kroger-owned (KR, +0.33%) stores in June—a move that has more than tripled the burger's distribution within two months.

Burgers made from plants instead of animals are capturing more space on U.S. barbecue grills this summer, fueling sales in the niche products that could reach $5 billion globally by 2020. Plant-based meat foods are now available that include beet juice for color and canola oil to simulate fat. These changes are not only pulling in consumers but also one of the powerhouses in traditional meat production, Tyson Foods Inc.

It was announced this week that all slaughterhouses in England will have to install CCTV cameras, in a Government move to try to improve animal welfare on UK farms. As a lover of animals, you’d think I would be thrilled at this news. Instead I can’t help but continue to wonder why on earth we are killing animals in the first place. It shouldn’t be a question of whether or not it’s caught on camera.

Cargill Inc., one of the largest global agricultural companies, has joined Bill Gates and other business giants to invest in a nascent technology to make meat from self-producing animal cells amid rising consumer demand for protein that’s less reliant on feed, land and water.

Today we welcomed Leonardo DiCaprio to the Beyond Meat family as an official investor and advocate. Our relationship with Leo began a few years back when he first visited our research center and subsequently provided feedback on early iterations of The Beyond Burger. Leo shares our vision that we can positively impact climate change by bringing satiating, appealing, plant-based meats to the center of the plate, and we are thrilled to have his partnership.

Uma Valeti remembers the first time he really thought about where meat comes from. A cardiologist turned founder, Valeti grew up in Vijayawada, India, where his father was a veterinarian and his mother taught physics. When he was 12, he attended a neighbor's birthday party. In the front yard, people danced and feasted on chicken tandoori and curried goat. Valeti wandered around to the back of the house, where cooks were hard at work decapitating and gutting animal after animal to keep the loaded platters coming.

In early October, I surprised my family, friends and colleagues by announcing that I had become a vegan. Up until then, I wasn’t even vegetarian. I loved sausages, I ate chicken several times a week and I couldn’t imagine living without cheese. I have, of course, known for a long time that animal farming is a nasty business. Like everyone, I have seen those distressing pictures of the conditions endured by poultry, cattle and pigs in factory farms.

Ranchers on Monday sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking to force meat to again be labeled if it's produced in other countries and imported to the United States. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Spokane, seeks to overturn a March 2016 decision by the Department of Agriculture to revoke regulations requiring imported meat products to be labeled with their country of origin. That change allowed imported meat to be sold as U.S. products, the lawsuit said.

Most people end up believing exactly what they want to believe, and that includes the truth about the food that they are shoving into their faces. This guy said he’s been a butcher for 30 years and when he sees cancer in the pork he just cut it out then they still sell the meat to customers. Smh. Unfortunately, in the United States today we can’t even rely on the big food corporations to label their products accurately. Just check out what a different new study recently discovered. Some hotdogs were labeled as pork meat only, but were found to contain traces of horse meat after all.

Cheap meat comes at a high cost, and it’s American consumers who foot the bill. According to data provided over email by research firm Technomic, the average fast food cheeseburger costs $4.02, but that price tag doesn’t take into account a number of invisible external costs, also known as “externalities.” These include poisonous methane emissions from cows that accelerate climate change and higher health care costs associated with unhealthy diets, which are ultimately paid for by society.

It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, deforestation, species loss and human mortality. So what’s the holdup?