Professor Henry T. "Hank" Greely, Director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences, addresses on NPR's Day to Day the potential legal issues that accompany using animal cells to create "living art":

There are also legal issues. Growing tissue from bones picked up at your local butcher may be legal if local land-use laws allow such activity, but working with live animals gets more complicated according to Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely.

"Whether this art counts as research — who knows," Greely says. "The legal situation is murky in several directions, and I think it's highly likely that not all artists are carefully advised about it."