According to The Guardian, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows California-based Upside Foods to take cells from chicken in order to grow them into meat products in lab-controlled environments.

FDA officials said that they are currently discussing with other companies in this field, including those that are growing seafood alternatives in the lab.

Robert Califf, the FDA commissioner, said that "the world is experiencing a food revolution and the US food and drug administration is committed to supporting innovation in the food supply."

Singapore is currently the only other country in the world that allows lab-grown meat alternatives to be sold to consumers.

Costa Yiannoulis, managing partner at Synthesis Capital, a food technology venture capital fund, said that "we will see this as the day the food system really started changing."

"The US is the first meaningful market that has approved this – this is seismic and groundbreaking", he added.

Lab-grown meat has multiple advantages as opposed to the protein coming directly from livestock.

One of those is the fact that illnesses that are transmitted through consuming the meat coming from animals can be avoided through specially-grown alternatives, according to UN experts.

Also, lab meat could allow us to significantly reduce the emissions coming from agriculture, which is essential if we want to reach our climate objectives.

It remains to be seen how customers in the US and the rest of the world will receive lab-grown meat alternatives, as this is a new type of product that joins plant-based food as the revolutionaries of the food industry.