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Update 17 May 2024: After a promising beginning, is Singapore's cultivated meat industry on the way to the slaughterhouse?
What is next for the nascent industry that seemed off to such a good start?
It was June 2022, and the lab-grown meat industry looked like it had a sizzling future. The largest cultivated chicken meat facility in Asia broke ground in Singapore, with a 30,000 sq ft complex at Bedok Food City, set to produce "tens of thousands of pounds" of meat a year.
The company behind this audacious venture was US-based Eat Just, who had plans to sell lab-grown chicken meat under the label Good Meat. Eat Just representatives were joined by Singapore officials, including Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu, at the groundbreaking ceremony. Indeed, in October 2022, the government announced it had set aside fresh funding of S$165 million (US$122 million) to accelerate R&D in sustainable urban food production, future foods, and food safety science and innovation. This was over and above an initial S$144 million of research funding in 2020.
Singapore was also the first country to approve the sale of lab-grown meat, with Huber's Butchery in Dempsey Hill being the only restaurant in the world selling lab-grown meat back in early 2023. In March this year, Eat Just put its lab-grown meat production at the Bedok facility on hold, the Straits Times reported. Huber’s Butchery stopped offering the product in December last year. In the same month, it was reported that Singapore-based lab-grown seafood startups Shiok Meats and Umami Bioworks were merging. And it is not just here that the industry is slowing down. A New York Times article in February detailed the decline of the industry – one which had a bright start with investors pouring over US$3 billion into the industry between 2016 and 2022.
Cultivated meat producer Eat Just pauses operations in Singapore
Eat Just’s facility in Bedok Food City was shuttered when The Straits Times visited it on Feb 29. ST PHOTO: SHABANA BEGUM
The world’s first cultivated meat product was approved for sale in Singapore in 2020 to much fanfare. But production of the cell-based meat by Californian firm Eat Just has been put on pause, The Straits Times understands. Eat Just’s cultivated chicken products – sold under the label Good Meat – are not available at Huber’s Bistro, which was previously the only restaurant offering the novel food. The Good Meat production facility in Bedok, initially slated to open in the third quarter of 2023, is shuttered, ST checks showed.
When queried, an Eat Just spokeswoman said: “We’re evaluating various processing conditions, the unit economics, and a larger strategic approach to producing in Asia.” Huber’s Bistro stopped offering the kebab skewers and chicken salads made with Good Meat in December 2023. Its marketing manager said Huber’s will have the product on the menu again when supply is ready and expects to resume its offering of the cultivated chicken “very soon”. It had previously been selling the dishes since January 2023.
Meanwhile, Eat Just’s $61 million cultivated meat manufacturing facility in Bedok appears not to be in operation. The company held a ground-breaking event for the facility in 2022. Timeline:
- December 2020: SFA approves the sale of a cultured meat product – bite-size chicken from Eat Just – after it is deemed safe for consumption. It is the first regulatory authority in the world to approve sale of such meat.
- January 2021: The cell-based chicken bites are first served in a members’ club in Robertson Quay known as 1880. Subsequently, the novel meat is sold on delivery platform foodpanda and at a few hawker stalls.
- March 2022: Eat Just announces that it will build a plant-protein factory in Pioneer. Alternative protein products that would be manufactured include bottled yolk made from mung bean protein and turmeric that can be scrambled and tastes like real eggs.
- June 2022: Eat Just breaks ground on its upcoming 30,000 sq ft facility – about half the size of a football field – in food industry hub Bedok Food City. It is expected to be operational by the third quarter of 2023.
- December 2022: Eat Just announces that dishes made from its cultivated chicken, such as cultivated chicken kebab and fried cultivated chicken skin salad, will be offered at meat products producer and supplier Huber’s Butchery in Dempsey from January 2023. Eat Just said then it is hoping to get approval from SFA for cultivated beef in 2023.
- January 2023: ST reports that Eat Just has received approval from SFA to produce serum-free cultivated meat, a move that would see its laboratory-made chicken produced more cheaply and sustainably.
- June 2023: The United States approves the sale of cultured meat from Good Meat and Upside Foods to consumers, making it the second country, after Singapore, to allow cultivated meat sales.
- December 2023: Huber’s Bistro in Dempsey pauses its offer of Good Meat chicken. In 2024, it told ST it is expecting to resume the offer “very soon”.
Lab-Grown Cultured Meat
A nugget made from lab-grown chicken meat at a restaurant in Singapore
The salad looks relatively normal: fried chicken, leafy greens, red cabbage, slices of mandarin, a mango-sesame dressing on the side. But this is no ordinary salad. Getting hold of this particular lunchbox involved staking out a hotel lobby and quick fingers on a delivery app. The prize? Not tickets to a K-pop concert, but one of the world’s first servings of cell-cultured meat. Our modest serving has been breaded and fried and tastes like a diced chicken schnitzel. With some poking and prodding, the nugget reveals none of the long muscle fibers you would expect to find in a chicken breast. This is perhaps responsible for a slight hint of rubber-ball bounciness, but overall the texture is impressively avian. We’d eat it again.
We have pescatarians, vegans, flexitarians, locavores and of course vegetarians. But what’s the word for those of us who make the choice to eat meat not raised on a farm or slaughtered in an abattoir, but grown in a lab? Perhaps the “cytovore”, consumer of cells. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. In Singapore, the US company Eat Just gained approval to sell its nuggets of lab-grown chicken to consumers in December 2020. Under the brand name “Good Meat”, Eat Just rolled out its first products at an exclusive social club. Diners sample a bao with sesame chicken and pickled cucumber and a maple waffle served with chicken nuggets. In April, Eat Just partnered with another restaurant to begin introducing its chicken to a wider public via a delivery service. As well as the Asian chicken salad, the Cantonese restaurant is also selling their novel meat in the form of chicken dumpling and chicken fried rice. Demand has already been high – just a few minutes after appearing online, the eight servings for the day were sold out.
Cultured meat has made strides in the last few years, but production remains small. Although the science of tissue culture has been around for more than half a century, growing sufficient flesh to make an edible product at a competitive price has been the major challenge. Good Meat’s meals are priced at 23 Singapore dollars (about US$17) – certainly not a cheap portion. The company is actively working to scale up supply and bring down costs, but it’s clear that challenges remain. Consumer production requires using larger quantities of expensive growth media and bioreactors adapted from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. These look like the giant steel vats you might see on a brewery tour. The cells grown in these tanks are mixed with other food products to obtain a desirable taste and consistency. This high level of processing is certainly not likely to appeal to everyone.
Largest plant-protein factory in Singapore to open within the next two years
The humble mung bean - used in the old school dessert tau suan - will be the key ingredient in the largest plant-protein factory to come to Singapore within the next two years.
Eat Just, the Californian start-up responsible for the alternative protein factory, said that the bean can be transformed into a protein isolate, which is a main ingredient of alternative protein products manufactured here. The products include bottled yolk that can be scrambled and cell-grown meat products currently being manufactured in Singapore.
To be built on a 2.7ha plot in Pioneer, the factory will contribute thousands of tonnes of plant-based protein every year, strengthening Singapore's food security.
Singapore first in world to approve lab-grown meat for sale
The Singapore Food Agency is allowing Eat Just's cultured chicken to be sold here after an evaluation process which looked at factors such as the product's manufacturing process and toxicity of ingredients, as well as whether the final product meets the standards in food regulation
Menus here could soon feature chicken grown in facilities such as bioreactors instead of farms, as the authorities have deemed one such product safe for consumption.
Regulatory approvals are in place for a particular cultured chicken, making it the first time in the world that cultured meat products will go on sale. These products are made by culturing animal cells instead of by slaughter and are not yet available for sale and consumption anywhere else.
The cultured chicken bites will be manufactured in Singapore by Californian start-up Eat Just, said its chief executive Josh Tetrick.
Singapore approves lab-grown 'chicken' meat
Eat Just chicken nuggets
Singapore has given regulatory approval for the world’s first “clean meat” that does not come from slaughtered animals. The decision paves the way for San Francisco-based startup Eat Just to sell lab-grown chicken meat. The meat will initially be used in nuggets, but the company hasn’t said when they will become available.
Demand for alternatives to regular meat has surged due to consumer concerns about health, animal welfare and the environment. According to Barclays, the market for meat alternatives could be worth $140bn (£104bn) within the next decade, or about 10% of the $1.4tn global meat industry.
Plant-based meat options such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are increasingly found on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus. But Eat Just’s product is different because it is not plant based, but instead grown from animal muscle cells in a lab.
No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time
Singapore’s approval of chicken cells grown in bioreactors is seen as landmark moment across industry
Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry. The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.
Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild.
The cells for Eat Just’s product are grown in a 1,200-litre bioreactor and then combined with plant-based ingredients. Initial availability would be limited, the company said, and the bites would be sold in a restaurant in Singapore. The product would be significantly more expensive than conventional chicken until production was scaled up, but Eat Just said it would ultimately be cheaper. The cells used to start the process came from a cell bank and did not require the slaughter of a chicken because cells can be taken from biopsies of live animals. The nutrients supplied to the growing cells were all from plants. The growth medium for the Singapore production line includes foetal bovine serum, which is extracted from foetal blood, but this is largely removed before consumption. A plant-based serum would be used in the next production line, the company said, but was not available when the Singapore approval process began two years ago.
Diners enjoy world’s first restaurant meal made from lab-grown meat
By the time you read this, a group of friends at a restaurant in Singapore will have shared a three-course meaty meal, which was made without slaughtering any animals – potentially a landmark moment for an industry coming to terms with its impact on the environment.
The cultured chicken used for the meal was grown in bioreactors, similar to the kind used to make beer or yoghurt, by US start-up Eat Just. The meat, branded as GOOD Meat, was approved for sale by the Singapore Food Standards Agency in December 2020, and is the world’s first cultured meat product to be sold commercially. The meals were served up by a restaurant called 1880, which aims to stir up debate around what we eat.
Generally speaking, cultured meat is made by harvesting stem cells from muscle tissue, before placing them in a substance that has everything the cells need to grow and proliferate. At a certain point, these are encouraged to differentiate and they mostly become muscle cells, which merge to form primitive muscle fibres. Eventually this is ground up and shaped into a burger, or in the case of the Singapore restaurant, a “chicken bite”.
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Eat Just, Inc. announced that its cultured chicken has been approved for sale in Singapore as an ingredient in chicken bites. The company has developed other cultured chicken formats as well
Eat Just's Lab-Grown Chicken Gets World’s First Cultured Meat Approval
As concern mounts over the environmental impacts of animal agriculture, Singapore has issued the world's first regulatory approval for lab-grown meat.
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has declared that the U.S.-based company Eat Just can sell its cultured "chicken bites" in the country, The Guardian reported Wednesday.
"I think the approval is one of the most significant milestones in the food industry in the last handful of decades," Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick said in a statement reported by The Guardian. "It's an open door and it's up to us and other companies to take that opportunity. My hope is this leads to a world in the next handful of years where the majority of meat doesn't require killing a single animal or tearing down a single tree."
The Myth of Cultured Meat
To satisfy the increasing demand for food by the growing human population, cultured meat (also called in vitro, artificial or lab-grown meat) is presented by its advocates as a good alternative for consumers who want to be more responsible but do not wish to change their diet. This review aims to update the current knowledge on this subject by focusing on recent publications and issues not well described previously. The main conclusion is that no major advances were observed despite many new publications.
Indeed, in terms of technical issues, research is still required to optimize cell culture methodology. It is also almost impossible to reproduce the diversity of meats derived from various species, breeds and cuts. Although these are not yet known, we speculated on the potential health benefits and drawbacks of cultured meat. Unlike conventional meat, cultured muscle cells may be safer, without any adjacent digestive organs. On the other hand, with this high level of cell multiplication, some dysregulation is likely as happens in cancer cells. Likewise, the control of its nutritional composition is still unclear, especially for micronutrients and iron. Regarding environmental issues, the potential advantages of cultured meat for greenhouse gas emissions are a matter of controversy, although less land will be used compared to livestock, ruminants in particular.
However, more criteria need to be taken into account for a comparison with current meat production. Cultured meat will have to compete with other meat substitutes, especially plant-based alternatives. Consumer acceptance will be strongly influenced by many factors and consumers seem to dislike unnatural food. Ethically, cultured meat aims to use considerably fewer animals than conventional livestock farming. However, some animals will still have to be reared to harvest cells for the production of in vitro meat. Finally, we discussed in this review the nebulous status of cultured meat from a religious point of view. Indeed, religious authorities are still debating the question of whether in vitro meat is Kosher or Halal (e.g., compliant with Jewish or Islamic dietary laws).
The Problem With Eating Lab-Grown Meat
Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash
Lab-grown meat, sometimes called cultured meat, clean meat or slaughter-free meat, is meat that is produced in vitro cell culture of animal cells. While it is not the same as the plant-based substitutes produced by start-ups like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, lab-grown meat lays claim to many of the same ethical and environmental merits.
Lab-grown meat is intended not as a complete alternative to eating animals, but as a method of severely reducing the number of animals that need to be force-fed and slaughtered for our consumption. By taking a sample of cells from just a few animals, technicians can produce vast quantities of meat in cultured vats.
Because lab-grown meat is meat, it should theoretically share the same taste and texture as conventional meat, if formulated correctly. The only difference is the process by which the quantity of meat ‘expands’. In farms, of course, this process takes the form of large-scale feeding programmes and methods to promote productive reproduction. In labs, however, this process is replaced with carefully selected cultures, designed to maximise the multiplying of cell tissues.
What is Cultured Meat
Cultured Beef is created by painlessly harvesting muscle cells from a living cow. Scientists then feed and nurture the cells so they multiply to create muscle tissue, which is the main component of the meat we eat. It is biologically exactly the same as the meat tissue that comes from a cow.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that the demand for meat is going to increase by more than two-thirds in the next 40 years and current production methods are not sustainable. In the near future both meat and other staple foods are likely to become expensive luxury items, thanks to the increased demand on crops for meat production, unless we find a sustainable alternative.
Livestock contributes to global warming through unchecked releases of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The increase in demand will significantly increase levels of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide and cause loss of biodiversity.
Cultured meat
Cultured meat is meat produced by in vitro cell culture of animal cells, instead of from slaughtered animals. It is a form of cellular agriculture. Cultured meat is produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicine. The concept of cultured meat was popularized by Jason Matheny in the early 2000s after co-authoring a seminal paper on cultured meat production and creating New Harvest, the world's first nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting in vitro meat research.
In 2013, Mark Post, a professor at Maastricht University, was the first to showcase a proof-of-concept for cultured meat by creating the first burger patty grown directly from cells. Since then, several cultured meat prototypes have gained media attention: SuperMeat opened a laboratory restaurant called "The Chicken" in Tel Aviv to test consumer reaction to its "Chicken Burger". The "world's first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat" occurred in December 2020 at the Singapore restaurant "1880", where cultured meat manufactured by the US firm Eat Just was sold.
The production process still has much room for improvement, but it has advanced under various companies. Its applications lead it to have several prospective moral, health, environmental, cultural, and economic considerations in comparison to conventional meat.
Growing meat in the laboratory may do more damage to the climate in the long run than meat from cattle, say scientists. Researchers are looking for alternatives to traditional meat because farming animals is helping to drive up global temperatures. However, meat grown in the lab may make matters worse in some circumstances. Researchers say it depends on how the energy to make the lab meat is produced.
There's increasing concern about the impact of meat consumption on the planet. Around a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving up temperatures are estimated to have come from agriculture. Beef production is considered the worst offender with cattle emitting methane and nitrous oxide from their manures, but also from their digestive processes. There are also additional gases from fertiliser application to land, from the conversion of land for pasture or feed production.
Because of these impacts on the climate and because of a range of other concerns about issues such as welfare and sustainability, scientists have in recent years sought to develop meat that can be grown from animal cells in factories or laboratories. One perceived advantage would be much lower greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane.
related: Lab-grown meat: The future of food?
Beefing up efforts to grow meat in labs
Firms are working on culturing stem cells from chickens, cows and fish to make meat
It is clean, has a low carbon footprint and does not involve any killing. Lab-grown meat is a key protein alternative of the future and could be making its way to dinner plates here, as Singapore ramps up production of home-grown food.
The effort is getting a boost from the Government's Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2020 plan, under which $144 million is going into food-related research, including sustainable urban food production, future foods and food safety science and innovation.
To make meat, stem cells extracted from chickens, cows, fish and pigs will be grown and multiplied in bioreactors, and eventually undergo tissue engineering to make whole meat cuts, say researchers.
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