Singapore has become the first country in the world to allow the sale of cultured meat. On Tuesday [December 2], the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) granted San Francisco start-up Eat Just Inc. regulatory approval to sell their lab-grown chicken in the city-state.
East Just is well known for their plant-based egg substitute made from mung beans. Their new chicken bites product is created from cultured chicken cells, and will make their debut in a Singapore restaurant before expanding into dining and retail establishments in the country, according to the company’s CEO Josh Tetrick.
“We’re going to start out with a single restaurant and then scale out to five, 10, 15 and then eventually into retail,” Tetrick said to NBC News. “The infrastructure required to do it is primarily the bioreactors, so we’ll eventually be moving to 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000 litres.”
Cultured or lab-grown meat is different from plant-based alternatives, as it is created using stem cells from an animal’s muscle or fat tissue that is then grown in a laboratory using a bioreactor.
The Eat Just product is reportedly high in protein and rich in minerals.
“We think that [the way] to really solve the meat problem — which is a health problem, a deforestation problem, a morality problem — is to make animal protein,” Tetrick said to NBC News.
Picture: Eat Just