Lab-grown chicken approved for sale in U.S.

For the first time ever, U.S. regulators have approved the sale of chicken meat made from lab-grown animal cells. 

The Agriculture Department says California firms Upside Foods and Good Meat can now bring "lab-grown" meat to restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves. 

"It essentially is real chicken made from animal cells," said Vitor Santo, senior director of cellular agriculture for Good Meat. 

According to Santo, "cell-cultivated" or "cultured" meat as it's being called, is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal.

"Instead of you having to raise a whole chicken and slaughtering and then cooking meat from it, what we do is we go back to the foundation of meat, which is really animal cells and instead of growing in them, in the animal, we grow that main bioreactor, which is essentially like a vessel, like a vat, similar to what we do fermentation, and we grow those cells with nutrients with these enriched media, and we produce chicken like that," Santo said.

Lab-grown chicken will be limited in its availability to just a few restaurants at first but companies expect that to expand in the coming months and years until you can buy it at the local grocery store.

That said, don't think you should go crazy on barbecue plans just yet. 

"A balanced diet is still the best way to go," said Lisa Moskovitz, a dietician in New York City. "Whether you're getting your protein from the grocery store or from a lab or your meat is from a farm or from a petri dish, you know, it's about the balance."

Company officials are quick to note the products are meat, not substitutes.

Lab-grown meat can be mass-produced. It doesn't harm animals and these companies say they eventually help to reduce the environmental impacts of raising animals.