Singapore launches the world’s first sales of laboratory-grown chicken

In what should be a world first approval, this week Singapore gave the green light for Eat Just to start selling its lab-grown chicken meat in restaurants, with sales to regular consumers to follow later.

Unlike some of the company’s other herbal products like Just Egg (which is made mostly from mung beans) or Just Mayo (which is made from yellow peas), or others vegetable meats like Impossible BurgerEat Just’s lab-made chicken is derived from cultures of chicken cells grown in a bioreactor fed with various proteins, amino acids, sugars, and minerals.

While more than a dozen different companies are currently working on their own version of lab meat, getting approval from the Singapore Food Agency or SFA, the lab-made chicken from Eat Just – which will be produced under the The company’s new GOOD Meat brand – is the first of its kind to get a commercial launch.

To create his lab meat, Eat Just says no chickens are killed to create the cell lines used to create their lab chicken meat, with the company relying instead on cells from methods such as biopsies from live chickens. . Eat Just also claims that with its production methods significantly cleaner than traditional poultry farms, the company says it doesn’t need to use antibiotics to make its lab-grown chicken. In addition, before obtaining approval from the Singapore government, Eat Just says it completed 20 production runs of its chicken to prove the safety and consistency of its product.

According to company press release, initially, Eat Just’s lab-grown chicken will be used as an ingredient in chicken bites or chicken nuggets, although Eat Just is already working on other “cultured chicken formats” for use in other dishes or applications. However, while its first lab-made chicken has been approved for use, there is currently no specific date for it to go on sale in Singapore restaurants.

For Singapore, which relies heavily on imports for the vast majority of its food and produce, the idea of ​​lab-grown meat makes a lot of sense as it would allow Singapore to produce more chicken domestically, even in the dense urban areas. According to Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, the company also plans to market the product in other markets, possibly in the United States, but currently Singapore’s regulatory system for meat laboratory is ahead of other countries.

While many people today might balk at the idea of ​​eating lab-grown meat, with the recent surge in plant-based meats from companies like Impossible, Beyond Meat and others, meats grown in the laboratory. laboratory have long been hailed as one of the next big things, with a few screenings claiming the the world market for cultured meat will be worth more than half a billion dollars by 2032. Much remains to be learned about meat, but if you want to try it, you better save your air miles.