The unlikely partnership that might decide the future of meat

Something unusual is going on in the fledgling but fast-growing lab-grown meat industry. A technology that was developed to displace meat and end animal farming has, in the last couple of years, received a boost from an unlikely source: meat companies. Take Tyson Foods, the world’s second-largest processor and seller of beef, chicken, and pork. If you’ve ever eaten a hamburger or a chicken nugget in the United States, that cow or chicken was reasonably likely to have been slaughtered at a Tyson Foods processing plant. This February, the company announced it was launching its own plant-based products line, manufacturing meat alternatives made out of plants.And that’s not its first foray into meat alternatives. Since 2016, Tyson has made investmentsin plant-based and lab-grown meat research and operations, putting money into the cell-based meat startups Memphis Meats and Future Meat Technologies Ltd., and in the plant-based meat startup Beyond Meat.