20/11/2023

Lab-Grown Cultured Meat

Update 4 Mar 2024: 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:


Lab-grown meat is on the rise
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.


Meat made from cells is getting closer to animal flesh, but will meat eaters be convinced to change their diets?
A dish made from the Believer Meats’ cultivated lamb product at a test kitchen in Rehovot, Israel. Believer Meats is one of a growing number of companies making lab-grown meat, which can be produced without raising and killing animals

A familiar aroma wafted through the Believer Meats test kitchen as research and development chef Andres Voloschin flipped sizzling strips of chicken made from cells. Scientists produced this chicken. More than 150 start-ups are chasing an ambitious goal: meat that doesn’t require raising and killing animals, that is affordable, and tastes and feels like the meat we eat now.

They are part of an industry aiming to use cellular biology to reduce the environmental impact of the world’s ever-increasing demand for meat and change global protein production. “We are addicted to meat as a species. It’s part of our evolution. It’s part of our culture,” said Believer founder Yaakov Nahmias. But, he says, “we thought about quantity rather than the environment, rather than sustainability”.

Companies making so-called cultivated or cultured meat, which is also popularly known as lab-grown meat, are trying to scale up quickly – partnering with traditional meat companies, drawing more investors and breaking ground on new production facilities. Wide adoption of meat from cells is nowhere near assured, however. It is expensive to make and there are challenges, such as learning how to mimic the complex structure of steak. Government regulation is another obstacle. Only Singapore and the United States allow the sale of cultivated meat. And while many people who have tried it say they like it, others find the idea distasteful. A recent opinion poll found that half the adults in the US would be unlikely to try it. Most of those who said they wouldn’t said “it just sounds weird”.


Meat without slaughter: Here’s everything you need to know about lab-grown meat

Soon, Americans are going to be able to try chicken that comes directly from chicken cells rather than, well, a chicken. On Wednesday, the USDA gave Upside Foods and Good Meat the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown, or cultivated, chicken products in the United States. Don’t run to the supermarket just yet, though. It’s going to be a while before you can buy cell-based meat in stores, though you should be able to get a taste at a restaurant sooner.

Here’s everything you need to know about lab-grown meat:
  • What is it? - In a nutshell, lab-grown meat — or cultivated or cell-based meat — is meat that is developed from animal cells and grown, with the help of nutrients like amino acids, in massive bioreactors.
  • What’s so great about that? - For one thing, growing meat from cells means that people can eat meat without having to slaughter animals.
  • Is it vegetarian? - No. Unlike plant-based meats like the products made by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat (BYND), cultivated meat uses animal cells and so is not considered vegetarian.
  • So does it taste like regular meat? - Basically, yes. That’s according to former CNN reporter Julia Horowitz, who tried a cell-based meatball made by Ivy Farm Technologies, a British company.
  • What has been approved in the US? - On Wednesday, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service approved Upside Foods’ and Good Meat’s applications for a “grant of inspection.” Those types of applications “are approved following a rigorous process, which includes assessing a firm’s food safety system,” according to an FSIS spokesperson.
  • When will I be able to try it? - Soon! Well, soon-ish, and only if you’re in certain areas. Neither Upside Foods nor Good Meat have given a date for when their products will be available, but they each have a plan in place to get products out to the public, and Good Meat said Wednesday that production started immediately.
  • How much does it cost to make? - A lot. It cost over $300,000 to develop the first lab-grown burger, which was served a decade ago. The British company Ivy Farm said last year that it could produce a similar product for less than $50, CNN previously reported. That’s a radical improvement, but it’s still way more than a traditional burger costs (and imagine the markup!).
  • How much will it cost for me? - Unclear — but it seems like this first offering won’t be all that expensive, despite the high costs of production. Good Meat’s cultivated chicken will be priced at a slight premium or comparable to other chicken items at a José Andrés restaurant, Noyes said.


Healthy, sustainable, delicious: Does lab-grown meat fulfill its promises?
A piece of chicken from a tank: It doesn't just look like chicken, it also tastes and smells like «normal» meat

In Singapore and the U.S., lab-grown chicken can already be found on restaurant menus. Europe will soon follow. One NZZ writer tries it for herself – and looks into whether it really lives up to its other claims.

The meat in front of me is a light brown color, a piece of flesh that never grew on an actual chicken, but instead in a sterile steel tank in Singapore. Here in this the Asian city-state, the product from American biotech company Eat Just was approved for sale two years ago, and can be ordered at Huber's Bistro on some days. It is served with many promises: It is supposed to be more climate-friendly, better for the environment and even healthier than conventional meat. More on this later. My question right now is: What does a fillet made in a lab taste like? With precise cuts, the bistro’s chef, Jeff Yew, cuts the rectangle into thin strips and throws them into a cast-iron pan with hot fat. It hisses. After less than a minute, the smell of roasted chicken fills the room.

Ten minutes later, he wishes me «Bon appétit,» and places an artfully twisted nest of pasta with roasted asparagus tips, artichoke bottoms and pickled tomatoes in front of me, topped with the much-praised strips of artificial meat. I skewer one of the pieces. It has a delicate texture, and an unobtrusive, typical chicken flavor that blends harmoniously, but not dominantly, into the almost sinfully buttery pasta sauce. In short: The lab meat tastes like chicken. It is juicy and soft. It is clearly a meat product, and not a second-rate substitute. It works really well as part of a pasta dish, but I can also imagine it served sliced in a creamy sauce or as crispy fried nuggets. But can it compete with a grilled chicken leg? To me, at least, it tastes much better than the various vegetarian meat substitutes. So in terms of taste, the chicken from the tank gets a plus point. But what about its other promises?


Lab-grown meat: How it's made, sustainability and nutrition

Lab-grown meat is a genetically engineered product that uses biotechnology. But is it healthier than meat reared from livestock? Lab-grown meat, which can also be referred to as cultivated or cultured meat, is real meat that's grown directly from animal cells. According to Eric Schuzle, the vice-president of product and regulation at UPSIDE Foods, these products are “real meat, made without the need to raise and slaughter animals.”

Cultivated meat may sound like a thing of the future, but it’s closer to reaching supermarket shelves than you might think. In fact, the first piece of lab-grown meat hit the world stage in 2013 when a team at the University of Maastricht presented the first hamburger produced by bovine stem cells. At the time, this original burger cost more than $300,000 to create. But researchers found that two years later, they were able to reduce the cost to $11.36. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the world population will surpass 9.1 billion by 2050, at which point agricultural systems will not be able to supply enough food to feed everyone. But could lab-grown meat help fill this void? Here’s what we know so far. According to researchers in the Journal of Integrative Agriculture, lab-grown meat is made by using the more-than-100-year-old technique of in vitro muscle tissue growth.

“The process of making cultivated meat is similar to brewing beer, in that this is an industrial cell culture process based upon well-hewn fermentation technology,” says Schuzle. “However, instead of growing yeast or bacteria, we grow animal cells. We start by taking a small amount of cells from high-quality livestock animals, like a cow or chicken, and then figure out which of those cells have the ability to multiply and form delicious meat food products. “From there, we put the cells in a clean-and-controlled environment and provide them with the essential nutrients they need to naturally replicate and mature. In essence, we can recreate the conditions that naturally exist inside an animal’s body so that the cells can continue growing. Once the meat is ready, we harvest it, process it like conventional meat products, and then package, cook or otherwise prepare it for consumption.” Schuzle adds: “We’re excited about this as a new way to produce meat because our cells can continue growing many times over as compared to those in the animal. In effect, we can grow many animals from the cells of just one animal for many years to come.”


Pros & Cons Of Lab Grown/Cultured Meat (Benefits & Disadvantages)

Cultured meat is also referred to as lab grown meat, or clean meat (along with other names too), for marketing purposes. These names generally refer to products that use cellular agriculture over conventional agriculture for meat type products)

Pros Of Lab Grown Meat:
  • May help meet the food demands of a growing population now, and in the future
  • May help address world hunger in some ways
  • May help minimize the potential negative sustainability/environmental effects and potential animal cruelty issues of livestock agriculture
Cons Of Lab Grown Meat:
  • The need for lab grown meat is questioned by some – given that we already produce enough food for the world’s population
  • The claimed causes of world hunger and food security are caused by problems that the production of lab grown meat might not solve
  • Affordability might be one of the main issues – production cost has been a major barrier thus far
  • There are possibly better, cheaper and more effective ways to produce food for the human population


WHAT IS LAB-GROWN MEAT, AND HOW IS CULTURED MEAT MADE?
Eat Just's cultured chicken on a grill with vegetables

Billions of cows, chickens, and pigs are killed each year to feed an unsustainable demand for meat that’s eating away at the planet. But innovations in science and technology could bring this needless killing to an end. Lab-grown meat is here.

The concept of lab-grown meat—also known as cultured, cultivated, cell-based, or clean meat—emerged over the course of the last two decades. As Silicon Valley start-ups race to get lab-grown meat on the market, it's getting closer and closer to becoming available for consumers. And the stakes are incredibly high. Lab-grown meat has the potential to spare millions of animals from lifetimes of suffering and inhumane deaths in factory farms.

70 billion land animals, and possibly trillions of marine animals, are killed for human consumption each year. A majority of these animals are raised in factory farms, where they experience brutal forms of abuse in severely overcrowded and putrid conditions for the entirety of their short lives. Major meat producers often defend factory farming as the most efficient way to meet the global demand for meat. But evidence shows that these facilities are disastrous for the environment, nearby communities, consumer health, and animal welfare. It shouldn’t have to be this way. It's time to fix our broken food system. It's time to look for alternatives. Lab-grown meat could hold the key.


What is lab-grown meat? How it's made, environmental impact and more
Meat grown in the lab at the University of Maastricht in 2011. Two years later, the world’s first cultured burger was created by the scientists © Reuters

It wasn’t long ago that the idea of the meat on our plates coming from vast stainless steel bioreactors, rather than farmed animals, seemed like science fiction. The notion has gone through numerous rebrands since its early positing as ‘vat meat’, which triggered unappealing visions of high-tech Spam.

‘Lab meat’ came next, as scientists perfected the recipe in small beakers in laboratories. Then came the more appetising-sounding ‘cultured meat’, as investment from high-profile individuals rocketed and producers positioned these products as having been brewed, just like beer. Now, ‘cultured meat’ has evolved to ‘cultivated meat’, which is the preferred term used by CEOs in the industry. Whatever you choose to call it, with the future of global food security in question, and farmed meat a key culprit in climate breakdown, slaughter-free meat is starting to look increasingly like the future of food.

How is lab-grown meat made? Rather than being part of a living, breathing, eating and drinking animal, cultivated meat is grown in anything from a test tube to a stainless steel bioreactor. The process is borrowed from research into regenerative medicine, and in fact Prof Mark Post of Maastricht University, who cultured the world’s first burger in 2013, was previously working on repairing human heart tissue. Cells are acquired from an animal by harmless biopsy, then placed in a warm, sterile vessel with a solution called a growth medium, containing nutrients including salts, proteins and carbohydrates. Every 24 hours or so, the cells will have doubled. How different is cultivated meat from the real thing? Cellular farming doesn’t grow cuts of meat, with bone and skin, or fat marbled through it like a succulent ribeye steak. Muscle cells require different conditions and nutrients to fat cells, so they must be made separately. When the pure meat or fat is harvested, it is a formless paste of cells. This is why the first cultivated meat products served up have been chicken nuggets or burgers.


A growing culture of safe, sustainable meat
For Singapore’s food game plan to be truly successful, a robust and scientifically-based regulatory framework is needed to address the latest developments in the rapidly evolving field of novel food including cultured meat

In a 1932 essay titled “Fifty Years Hence”, Winston Churchill penned these words capturing his thoughts on how the future of food production would look like. Today, what Churchill had envisioned decades ago may no longer be science fiction. This has been made possible with advances in tissue engineering used in modern medical applications applied to protein production for human consumption. 

The end product is an alternative to conventional meat, commonly known as cultured meat (also known as cultivated or cell-based meat) grown from animal cells. Considered a type of novel food, cultured meat does not have a history of being consumed as food. As such, its safety has to be assessed before it can be allowed to be used in food for human consumption. This is unlike other forms of alternative proteins such as traditional plant-based "mock meat" products made of soy or wheat proteins that are already a staple in many of our diets. While cultured meat may sound strange and even unappetising, there are many sound reasons why we could consider it a sustainable source of food in the near future.

The Future of Food - Since the days where Mark Post of Dutch food tech company Mosa Meat announced the first US$280,000 cultured cell hamburger live on air in London in 2013, several companies have rapidly joined the race. These include America’s Memphis Meats, and Japan’s IntegriCulture. The industry has also since attracted increasing amounts of funding. In Singapore, companies such as Shiok Meats are developing technologies that will yield cultured crustaceans for dining tables. Last year, it was announced that Shiok Meats received US$12.6 million (S$17.3 million) in Series A funding. Despite the hype, the truth is that the cultured meat industry is still in its early years. Apart from consumer education on this novel food, several factors need to be overcome before cultured meat enters the mainstream food supply.  While it appears the cost of producing lab-grown meat has been lowered recently – according to Reuters, ambitious start-ups say they can churn out cultured meat hamburgers priced at US$10 each by 2021 - scalability remains a challenge for many in the industry. Scientists are still researching ways to replace expensive culture media, and finding methods of culturing cells rapidly and at high volumes. Furthermore, the cultured meat industry also faces stiff competition from plant and microbial-based alternative proteins due to the relatively lower costs, as well as higher production capabilities and consumer acceptance level. That said, drivers of interest in cultured meat include consumers’ preference for more sustainable and animal cruelty-free food options. The necessity for urbanised cities such as Singapore to diversify their sources of food, is also a key impetus.


What exactly is lab-grown meat?
The world's first lab-grown burger, shown here, debuted in London in 2013. What once seemed like science fiction has grown into a multimillion-dollar industry that some say is the food of the future

In June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the production and sale of chicken meat by two companies—Upside Foods and Good Meat—who will each initially partner with a restaurant (Upside with Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and Good Meat with José Andrés' China Chilcano in the nation’s capital) with the hope of ultimately marketing other lab-grown meats and making them all available in supermarkets and restaurants.

The USDA decision makes the United States the second country, after Singapore, to legalize what its backers call cultivated or cultured meat, a significant boost to an industry that just a decade ago was purely science fiction. Today, it’s being developed by upwards of 150 companies to the tune of $896 million in investment in 2022 alone. But what is cultured meat, and why are so many people so interested in it?

How is cultured meat made? Cultured meat is “taking cells from animals that normally produce meat for us and using those cells as the powerhouse to grow the meat outside of the animal,” explains David Kaplan, director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. Adds Claire Bomkamp, lead scientist for cultivated meat and seafood with the Good Food Institute, it is “the same thing as traditional meat” but with “the animal taken out of the equation.” The first step to creating cultured meat is to procure animal cells, often via biopsy from an animal—either living or recently slaughtered—or by extracting cells from a fertilized egg. These cells are placed in culture media to encourage them to multiply; but if you’re imagining a bunch of scientists hunched over petri dishes, think bigger.


In a world first, cultured chicken meat approved for sale in Singapore
Local authorities have deemed the product safe for consumption. PHOTO: COURTESY OF EAT JUST

The world's first cell-cultured meat product - bite-sized chicken by Californian start-up Eat Just - will soon be available at restaurants here, now that Singapore authorities have deemed it safe for consumption.

Cultured meat, which involves making meat products by culturing animal cells instead of by slaughter, is not yet available for sale and consumption anywhere else in the world. The cultured chicken bites will be manufactured in Singapore, said Eat Just chief executive Josh Tetrick. "Singapore's regulatory approval of Eat Just's cultured chicken as food... paves the way for the product to be served to consumers in a restaurant setting soon," Mr Tetrick told The Straits Times, although he would not be drawn on a timeline for when the product might be available. He said that for a start, the chicken bites would probably cost as much as "premium chicken customers would enjoy at a restaurant".

But prices would fall as production is scaled up, he added, noting that costs were already a third of what they were a year ago. "To achieve our mission, we'll need to be below the cost of conventional chicken, which we expect to happen in the years ahead," he added. The chicken bites also have the potential to be Halal-certified, said Mr Tetrick, and this is something the company will consider in the future.



This multibillion-dollar company is selling lab-grown chicken in a world-first

You’d know a chicken nugget if you saw one, right? How about one grown from a single cell, with no animals harmed in the process?

Josh Tetrick is betting not. He is trying to win over consumers with his lab-grown chicken bite following the world’s first approval of his company’s cultured chicken in Singapore at the end of 2020.

“We have the freedom to sell across Singapore, whether retail, food service, hawkers, you name it,” Tetrick told CNBC Make It.


No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time
Eat Just’s ‘chicken bites’ will be initially available in a Singapore restaurant. Photograph: Hampton Creek/Eat Just

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.


Cultured meat

Cultured meat, also known as cultivated meat among other names, is a form of cellular agriculture where meat is produced by culturing animal cells in vitro. Cultured meat is produced using tissue engineering techniques pioneered in regenerative medicine. Jason Matheny popularized the concept in the early 2000s after he co-authored a paper on cultured meat production and created New Harvest, the world's first non-profit organization dedicated to in-vitro meat research. Cultured meat has the potential to address the environmental impact of meat production, animal welfare, food security and human health, in addition to its potential mitigation of climate change.

In 2013, Mark Post created a hamburger patty made from tissue grown outside of an animal. Since then, other cultured meat prototypes have gained media attention: SuperMeat opened a farm-to-fork restaurant, called "The Chicken" in Tel Aviv to test consumer reaction to its "Chicken" burger, while the "world's first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat" occurred in December 2020 at Singapore restaurant 1880, where cultured meat manufactured by United States firm Eat Just was sold. While most efforts focus on common meats such as pork, beef, and chicken which constitute the bulk of consumption in developed countries, companies such as Orbillion Bio focused on high-end or unusual meats including elk, lamb, bison, and Wagyu beef. Avant Meats brought cultured grouper to market in 2021, while other companies have pursued different species of fish and other seafood.

The production process is constantly evolving, driven by companies and research institutions. The applications for cultured meat led to ethical, health, environmental, cultural, and economic discussions. Data published by the non-governmental organization Good Food Institute found that in 2021 cultivated meat companies attracted $140 million in Europe. Cultured meat is mass-produced in Israel. The first restaurant to serve cultured meat opened in Singapore in 2021. Cultured meat is not yet widely available.


Cell-cultured or lab-grown meat
A chef preparing Eat Just's liquid plant-based egg

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.

read more

Introduction to Plant-based Meat alternatives

Plant based meat. What may instantly come to mind at these words are things like blocks of tofu and tempeh, canned chickpeas and dried green lentils — the staples of the many vegan kitchens that just don’t seem to capture everything that meat actually is.

Because, well, plant based meat is much more expansive than the raw legumes which, as exciting as they are, are not so appealing to the modern omnivore — or, not as appealing as a nice beef patty.

Plant based meat is anything that is a substitute for the flavours and nutrition of animal meat that is derived from plants or fungi. So yes, it does encompass such raw legumes, but it also extends to much more. Key Takeaways:
  • Plant based meat is anything that is a substitute for the flavours and nutrition of animal meat that is derived from plants or fungi.
  • It uses things like legume fractions, starches, fats, and recombinant proteins (as well as other additives) to simulate the nutritional and sensory properties of meat.
  • These ingredients are processed using shearing and extrusion in order to replicate the fibrous texture of meat.
  • It has massive implications for agriclture’s environmental footprint as well as food security, health and animal welfare.
  • The industry is rapidly expanding with investment on many fronts and the technology is popular amongst vegans/vegetarians and omnivores alike.


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