Cell culture keeps living cells growing in dishes, flasks or bioreactors on defined nutrient media, outside any organism. This laboratory mainstay lets food scientists probe how pathogens, toxins and allergens behave, produce enzymes, flavours and starter cultures, and now even grow meat directly from animal cells without slaughter. Everything hinges on sterility and well-characterized media, so results stay pure and reproducible. Regulators worldwide are still building the safety frameworks for cell-cultured foods. Scaling it from flasks to bioreactors is the engineering hurdle facing cultivated-meat pioneers today.