With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting approval to a cell-based – or cultivated – meat product, new foods are expected to hit store shelves soon.

Meat cultivation – or cellular agriculture – is the process of manufacturing meat through fermentation. Animal cells are grown in a fermenter, similar to beer and yeast production, and are fed with nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins and vitamins until they mature into muscle, fat and other tissues that make up meat. This process takes several weeks and has the potential to produce meat on a mass scale in a fraction of the time, energy and cost of traditional methods.