First Cultured Meat Fat in Retail Goes on Sale This Weekend

What the creator claims is the first retail sale of any cultured meat product – although only the fat component is cultured – will happen Nov. 1 at a Berkeley, Calif. grocery store. Mission Barns will demonstrate and sell its Cultivated Pork Meatballs for a few hours at Berkeley Bowl, the first of monthly rollouts of its cultivated pork products at the store.

The San Francisco company, founded in 2018, became the first in the world to receive FDA clearance for cultivated pork fat in March, followed by USDA inspection authorization – a regulatory milestone that cleared the path for commercial sales.

The bulk of the meatballs is plant proteins and traditional seasonings. But Mission claims the key to the flavor is the synthetically grown pork fat, trademarked as Mission Fat. Each limited-edition pack of Italian-style cultivated-pork meatballs will be priced at $13.99.

The Nov. 1 event will be the first tasting event in a series. Cultivated Pork Salami, presumably also based on cultured pork fat, will be demonstrated and sold at the same store on Dec. 12, followed by two more meatballs events in January and February. Mission Barns also makes a bacon product.

To help capture real-world feedback and consumer attitudes, Mission Barns is collaborating with researchers at Tufts University’s Center for Cellular Agriculture, who are observing the tasting series to inform future study design and public-acceptance frameworks.

The retail debut follows Mission Barns’ first restaurant partnership in September, when San Francisco’s Fiorella became the world’s first restaurant to serve cultivated pork meatballs and bacon.