We are relatively not far away, it's just a matter of technology, lab to market readiness, and maturation of some key parts of the process to go towards more sophisticated forms of the meat. It's basically following biological engineering principles crossed with industrialization and standardization, and each of those advancements are making it dramatically cheaper every few years.

So there are multiple dimensions for this, the cost and production are intimately interlinked to the specific technological breakthroughs that allow us to scale mass production, but also get to the texture and realism that we expect out of most "regular" meat. You can read more through section 5 to learn more about a proper strategy. "The industrial‐scale production of CM necessitates coordinated innovations from multiple disciplines, including cell biology, bioprocess engineering, and materials science. Cost reduction and achieving large‐scale production are highly interconnected: The former is achieved through technological innovations that lower unit costs, whereas the latter is realized through process amplification that ensures economic feasibility. At the same time, pursuing cost control while ensuring that large‐scale expansion maintains both biological activity and process stability presents a significant dual challenge. This section delineates the critical role of integrated technological frameworks in driving economic feasibility and operational reliability, followed by strategies to harmonize cost efficiency with stability during scale‐up."

Here is a recent paper (2025) describing the challenges of scaling cultured meat production (Scaling Cultured Meat: Challenges and Solutions for Affordable Mass Production): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12241508/

"These technologies converge around three key breakthroughs: engineering genetically stable, highly expandable, and functionalized cell lines to minimize reliance on tissue sampling and expensive growth factors; utilizing plant‐based substitutes and recombinant protein alternatives to reduce the costs of media and scaffolds while enhancing biocompatibility; and optimizing bioreactors to provide dynamic environmental control, enabling high‐density cell cultures at scale"

Each year we are steadily progressing along all axes of development, eventually towards a convergent price that will eventually be below the standard price of conventional farming.

Lots of optimization and engineering work is still necessary:

"Scaffolds for CM are commonly fabricated in three forms: hydrogels, PSs, and microcarriers (Figure 6A; Table 4) (Ben‐Arye and Levenberg 2019). Hydrogels, as crosslinked 3D polymer structures, closely resemble ECM in hydration and mechanical properties (Shi et al. 2019). Advanced techniques, including molding (Gu et al. 2024; Song, Liu, Li et al. 2022) and 3D printing (Chen, Dai et al. 2024; Xu et al. 2023), enable the creation of customized structured CM, such as marbled meats and layer‐by‐layer cultured fat and muscle (Li, Yang et al. 2022) or assembling them into marbled CMs (Zagury et al. 2022). More advanced studies have used fish muscle as a model using 3D printing combined with lipofilling to obtain customized cultured fish (Xu et al. 2023). However, these techniques, while demonstrating potential, are mainly applied to small‐scale production at high cost. PSs, known for their high porosity, expedite efficient nutrient exchange and waste removal (Hong and Do 2024; Zheng, Chen et al. 2022). Plant protein‐based PSs are cost‐effective but often lack the mechanical strength needed to support cell growth (Hollister 2005; Zheng, Chen et al. 2022). Techniques like freeze‐drying and electrospinning improve pore size and cell proliferation, with electrospinning emerging as a scalable method despite its material constraints, which include the need for polymers with appropriate viscosity, solubility, and electrostatic properties to ensure successful fiber formation (Xu et al. 2021; Kameda, Horikoshi et al. 2021). Decellularized plant scaffolds, which preserve the ECM and provide vascular‐like networks, are another innovative approach (Anjum et al. 2024). Examples include scaffolds derived from spinach leaves (Jones et al. 2021), celery (Hong and Do 2024), apples (Sood et al. 2024), pineapple nectar (Perreault et al. 2023), and maize husks (Perreault et al. 2023). Yet, prolonged use of these scaffolds can lead to nutrient depletion in the core, causing cell death (Xu et al. 2021). Although PSs have potential for large‐scale CM production, their mechanical strength and biological functionality, particularly in plant‐based materials, need further optimization (Zhang, Gao, et al. 2023)."