Nowadays meat is being prepared in a laboratory by growing animal cells in a special environment, which is called "cultured meat" or "lab-grown meat", and in it the animal is not slaughtered. Is eating this meat permissible in Shariah terms or not?

In the Shariah, the lawfulness of meat is connected with two things: the animal is halal in itself, and its meat is obtained after Shar'i slaughter. Allah Almighty's statement is: ﴿حُرِّمَتْ عَلَيْكُمُ الْمَيْتَةُ وَالدَّمُ وَلَحْمُ الْخِنْزِيرِ... إِلَّا مَا ذَكَّيْتُمْ﴾ (Surah al-Ma'idah: 3) i.e. carrion, blood and the flesh of swine are haram, except that which you slaughter. In lab-grown meat no animal is slaughtered, therefore its ruling depends on three things: from which animal were the cells taken? In what state were they taken? And in what medium were they cultured?

This case is haram. It is narrated from Abu Waqid al-Laythi, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Whatever part is cut from an animal while it is alive is carrion" (Jami' at-Tirmidhi: 1480, hasan hadith; Sunan Abi Dawud: 2858). The Shariah has placed a part separated from a living animal in the ruling of carrion, and carrion is haram by the text of the Qur'an. Cells grow from these very parts, therefore the preponderant opinion of the majority of contemporary scholars is that the source of the cells must be after Shar'i slaughter; meat prepared from cells taken by biopsy from a living animal is not halal.

If the cells are taken from a pig or any other haram animal, or from carrion and an unslaughtered animal, then the resulting meat is definitively haram. This claim that during lab culturing its reality was transformed (istihalah) is not recognised, according to the majority of scholars, in those things that are intrinsically impure (najis al-'ayn).

If the cells are taken from such a halal animal (cow, chicken etc.) that has already been slaughtered in the Shar'i manner; the culture medium is completely free of blood and impure components — note that the commonly used "fetal bovine serum" is derived from calf blood, therefore by its use this condition is not fulfilled — and production is under reliable supervision and complete transparency so that the consumer knows what this thing is, then in this specific case scope for lawfulness emerges. Along these same lines the Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC) in its twenty-sixth session (Doha, 2025) gave a decision of conditional scope, and the fatwa (2024) of Singapore's Islamic Religious Council (MUIS) is also of this same type. This topic has also been the focus of our own research study (Al-Marjan, 2025), whose summary is this same conditional analysis.

At present, fulfilment of the aforementioned conditions in products available in the market is generally uncertain; until fulfilment of the conditions is established by a reliable halal certification, avoidance is the correct course, because the Prophet ﷺ said: "Leave that which causes you doubt for that which does not cause you doubt" (Jami' at-Tirmidhi: 2518, sahih). However, if there is a severe need for treatment and no halal alternative exists, then the principles of necessity are separate; in such a case the scholars should be consulted.

The objectives of protection of life and protection of wealth also include the purity of food and the protection of consumer trust; no technology, however beneficial it may be for the environment and animal welfare, can be declared permissible in Shariah terms to rely on carrion and a haram source for its production. The purity of the means takes precedence over the goodness of the objective.

Translated from the original Urdu fatwa.