The Singapore Food Agency has approved the sale of lab-grown meat products. This is the first time anywhere in the world cultured meat has been approved for sale. The product that has been given the approval is cultured chicken and has been produced by the San Francisco-based Eat Just.
“The first-in-the-world regulatory allowance of real, high-quality meat created directly from animal cells for safe human consumption paves the way for a forthcoming small-scale commercial launch in Singapore,” Eat Just said on Wednesday.
According to a CNN report, the meat, created from animal cells without slaughtering any chickens will debut in Singapore under the GOOD Meat brand. It will be available as a chicken bite with breading and seasoning in a single restaurant.
This lab-grown meat that is created in a bioreactor has high protein content and is also a rich source of minerals.
The company is working with local manufacturers and will expand its sales to other restaurants later. It said the meat will be sold as nuggets. The price had earlier been pegged at $50 each.
Josh Tetrick, the co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said: “We’ve been eating meat for many hundreds, thousands of years, always needing to kill an animal to eat — until now.”
He added the flavour and taste will be the same as chicken meat.
Cultured meat is not the same as plant-based meat. While the latter is made of pea or soy protein, lab-grown meat is grown in a laboratory directly from the cells.
Both have the same objective — offer an alternative to traditional meat products that could feed more people, reduce chances of zoonotic diseases and also mitigate the effect of meat consumption on the environment.
Both conventional meat and cultured meat have the same cellular structure, except that cultured meat does not come from animals directly.
However, cultivated meat is still at a nascent stage because of the high production cost involved.
