Singapore opens door to cultured meat

Singapore is the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to the commercial production of cultured meat. An American start-up is going to make chicken nuggets for restaurants but without the use of chicken.

From ninety per cent to seventy per cent import

Singapore secured a scoop: the city-state is the first country to approve the commercial sale of cultured meat. According to the country’s food agency, the San Francisco-based start-up Eat Just‘s farmed chicken meets the safety standards and can be used to produce so-called chicken nuggets.

The approval is a crucial step for the cultured meat industry, which is moving quickly towards a commercial breakthrough. According to its advocates, cultured meat – also known as lab-grown meat – is an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional animal farming as it does not require the slaughter or breeding of animals. Also, there are ethical advantages.

For Singapore, it is particularly interesting because at the moment the small island imports ninety per cent of its food, but wants to be self-sufficient for thirty per cent by 2030. To achieve this, the city-state focusses on new technologies, including vertical agriculture, hydroponics and from now on, also cultured meat.

Numerous challenges ahead

Producer Eat Just (formerly Hampton Creek and JUST) says it has already established partnerships with local manufacturers in the country to grow chicken cells and to develop the final product, which will initially be sold in restaurants. The company also wants to apply for a licence to sell fillets.

However, there are still many obstacles. The first challenge is to make cultured meat entirely animal friendly. Although the cells used come from the biopsy of a living chicken, and the nutrients for those cells come from vegetable sources, a serum derived from bovine foetuses is currently required for the production of the cultured meat.

Example for the rest of the world

Eat Just has attracted controversy in the past – they might have artificially inflated demand – and cultured meat still has issues with its image. Nevertheless, the biggest obstacle is price: in 2019, the company estimated a production cost of fifty dollars per chicken nugget. Although prices are likely to be lower now, cultured chicken will probably still be a very exclusive product in the next few years.

Notwithstanding, Singapore, as a test market could be an excellent opportunity to work on these challenges and open doors to further approvals, as safety tests and results will be cautiously followed-up by the rest of the world. A successful commercial launch in Singapore could help convince regulators worldwide that cultured meat is safe, research firm IDTechEx believes.