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Foods without meat that "bleed" like the real thing are more and more common. Could these vegetarian alternatives replace traditional hamburgers and sausages?
Concerns about the impact of our diets on the environment and health have sparked growing interest in vegetarian and vegan foods.
This stimulated everything from flexitarianism to vegan sausage rolls, to campaigns like "Veganuary".
While Quorn and Linda McCartney once dominated the aisles of meat substitutes in our supermarkets, new companies are emerging with a radically different view of "meatless".
Vegetarian "meat" designed to mimic the appearance, smell and taste of the real thing is already available, while scientists develop laboratory-grown meats
But with the arrival of these new dishes, an increasingly lively debate has taken place on what can be called "meat", as well as on the question of knowing – and even if – it should be sold.
The first type of these new meat substitutes are herbal products.
These are already available in restaurants, pubs and supermarkets, contributing to a growing market estimated at £ 4.6 billion. Last week, the US company Beyond Meat recorded a value of nearly 3.8 billion dollars (2.9 billion pounds sterling) after its debut on Wall Street.
Herbal "meat" aims to be so similar to cooking and eating that the real thing hardly distinguishes it.
It is made from vegetable protein – usually wheat, peas or potatoes. Natural dyes like red beet juice usually provide "blood".
Another American company, Impossible Foods, has come up with a vegetable version of heme, which gives beef its color and taste.
The second type of meat substitute is known as cultured or clean meat produced from animal stem cells.
These cells are grown in a laboratory or bioreactor, usually with the help of a growth-enhancing substance taken from a fetus of calf.
The process is probably closer to a scientist who cultivates tissue and replacement organs than the work of a livestock farmer.
Although not yet available in stores and restaurants, techniques are being explored in a number of countries and may be emerging in a few years.
A company called Just hopes to have his chicken grown in the lab on American tablets by the end of 2019.
These meat analogues are not meant for vegetarians and vegans.
There is great hope that plant-based and laboratory-grown meats will appeal to hard-core meat eaters.
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Impossible foods
The US company Impossible Foods has developed a vegetable version of the heme – which gives the beef its color and taste
But putting these products on our plates is not as simple as simply putting them in shops and restaurants.
It can be argued that the biggest obstacle is getting permission to sell them.
Meat companies in culture must undergo a rigorous safety assessment.
In the EU, this process can take up to two years. If the European Food Safety Authority decides that the product can be consumed safely, one must decide whether it can be placed on the market – and how it should be labeled.
In the United States, the schedule is less secure and relies on the approval of two separate departments: the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the collection and cultivation of animal cells, and the US Department of Agriculture, which decides on marketing conditions for cultivated meat.
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Even with the approval of regulators, it remains necessary to win the public.
For many consumers, the "yuck" factor of lab-grown meat might be too powerful to be considered as an alternative to real meat – or something that they even want to eat.
For others, the most important thing can be clear and transparent information about what they eat and where they come from.
In the United States, a more precise definition of "meat" is required before this new technology is put on sale.
The term should only be used to describe "the tissue or flesh of animals that have been harvested in a traditional way," says the US Cattlemen's Association.
For producers of meat substitutes, the outcome of these debates could have a positive or negative impact on their activities.
Consumers are more likely to buy "clean" or "no-slaughter" meat than "laboratory-grown" meat.
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Naming is also important for herbal "meats", in contrast to the use of terms such as "burger", "steak" or "sausage" to describe them growing.
The EU should consider proposals to restrict these terms only to the description of edible animal products. This has led to information that this could mean that veggie burgers and sausages might have to take more descriptive names such as "disks" and "tubes".
France has already chosen to ban "misleading" labeling of vegetarian products, suggesting that the "vegetarian" and "vegan bacon" labels could be confusing.
Farmers and investors in plant-based meat and cultured meat are hoping that this meat will rival the taste, cost and convenience of conventional meat.
Some think that this could replace our most environmentally damaging meats and help achieve climate goals.
Conventional meat production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and one of the major drivers of environmental damage. Scientists have described a dietary change essential to combat climate change.
The "meat" of plant origin produces much less greenhouse gas emissions and requires much less land and water.
However, growing meat in a laboratory always requires a lot of energy. A report from the Oxford Martin School suggested that under certain circumstances – in the very long term, ignoring emissions resulting from land-use change associated with animal production – laboratory meat could lead to more warming than cattle meat.
Lab-grown meat is still produced only in small quantities, which makes it difficult to evaluate large-scale production.
Another problem is how a shift to meat substitutes would affect ranchers, with some arguing that much of the land on which animals are bred is not fertile enough for crop production.
For consumers, there are important questions.
Are they willing to rethink the role of livestock in food and in our culture?
And if the "meat" comes from plants or animal cells, is it still meat?
About this piece
This analysis article was commissioned by the BBC to an expert working for an outside organization.
Laura Wellesley is a research fellow at the Department of Energy, Environment and Resources at Chatham House. She co-authored her report Meat Analogues: Considerations for EU, funded in part by Humane Society International and Compassion in World Farming. You can follow her on Twitter.
Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, describes itself as an independent political institute contributing to the construction of a sustainable, just, prosperous and sustainable world. The principles of Chatham House state that it "always retains independent control over its reports and results, regardless of the source of funding, ensuring the objectivity of the work conducted under its name."
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