Singapore is the first country in the world to approve lab-grown meat for sale. People can enjoy chicken grown in a lab by San Francisco-based Eat Just, without any actual chickens involved. However, this cultured meat is still far from vegan.

Currently, lab meat is still grown in a medium that uses fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is derived from the blood of cow fetuses and is harvested from pregnant cows. Lab meat offers a bright future in terms of emissions, animal welfare and human health, but the ethics are still complex.

“FBS contains a mixture of all [the] major types of proteins and growth factors needed for cell culture,” cultured meat expert Jordi Morales-Dalmau, a project manager for German biotech company OSPIN, told Lifewire via instant message. “Because FBS is so versatile and rich, it is very difficult to mimic it in the lab with natural or synthetic compounds.”

Not only is fetal bovine serum growth medium dirty (although the animals it is harvested from are likely treated much better than animals in the conventional food chain), it is also expensive and requires animals. The goal of lab-grown meat is to eliminate the emissions from producing so much meat, to produce purer meat without antibiotics or bacteria, and to compete on price with real meat. To do this, a cheap, abundant alternative to FBS is needed.