Chicken Nuggets Made Without Harming A Single Bird Will Hit Restaurants This Year

chicken nuggets

JUST, who used to be known as Hampton Creek, just shocked the world by announcing that they intend to get cultured chicken nuggets into restaurants by the end of 2018.

That means that JUST can take something like a chicken feather and turn it into nuggets. They’re not actually adding the feather into anything, but are instead using it as a tissue sample from which meat can be cultivated.

chicken nuggets

Photo courtesy of JUST

JUST’s head of communications, Andrew Noyes, described it as a “small, harmless biopsy” that inflicts no pain on the animal.

From there, the best cells are grown from that sample, and production afterward is quick, taking just a few weeks. In the largest commercial scale JUST hopes to reach, it would take two days to produce enough meat to make a chicken nugget.

Their team is working on improving that production efficiency, including the creation of a serum-free media that’s one of the bigger challenges to scaling and commercializing that process. However, JUST does have enough production capacity at this point where they’re ready to unleash cultured chicken nuggets to the world.

 

Product concept illustration courtesy of JUST. Not an actual product or something being created in the near term.

 

 

Pending regulatory approval, JUST aims to complete their first sale of the nuggets (or another chicken product) by the end of the year. This will likely not happen in the United States, where the USDA and FDA are still hashing out regulations, however, small-scale restaurants in other parts of the world may be able to incorporate them soon.

Just last year, food technology company Memphis Meats announced it was working on lab-grown fried chicken, and it came with a notice that they were planning to have the “cultured meat” in grocery stores by 2021. It seemed like a far time away, and looked like nobody else was as close to a commercial product as they were, but JUST undercut that time frame with this announcement.

The end of year launch would be far faster than anyone anticipated, and accelerates the “clean meat” movement into the present day, rather than as a part of the future.

More content

Eating Out
Wendy’s Introduces New Frosty Swirls And Frosty Fusions
Get ready, Frosty fans—Wendy’s is shaking things up this spring with two exciting new treats: Frosty Swirls and Frosty Fusions. Imagine your favorite Classic Chocolate…
,
CultureEating Out
Michelin-Starred Chef Brings Culinary Magic To Disneyland Paris With New Restaurant
Forget Paris Fashion Week, escargot, and the Eiffel Tower—Disneyland Paris is bringing the real magic with its latest dining experience. La Forêt Secrète, nestled inside…
,
CultureEating Out
Here’s All The Must-Try Eats At Disneyland’s ‘Season Of The Force’
Whether you support the Empire or the Rebel Alliance, you will want to make your way to Disneyland for the return of the Season of…
,
Burger
We Deliver!

Enter your email address below and we'll deliver our top stories straight to your inbox