Regulators at the Singapore Food Agency have approved the sale of lab-grown meats by Eat Just.
The decision took about two years. During the approval process, several requirements had to be met by Eat Just, such as food security or consistent production of chicken from cultured cells.
Cultured meat is made by collecting cells from the animal’s fat or muscle, then placing these cells in a medium culture that feeds them, allowing them to grow. That medium is then placed in a bioreactor to support cell growth. Tetrick, the CEO of Eat Just, compared the process to brewing beer, but with a very different end product.
“The race for the future of food has begun,” said the executive director of the Good Food Institute, Bruce Friedrich. The Institute has been discussing the use of laboratory meat with the government of Singapore for over three years.
Its approval by Singapore is a milestone that should attract more companies with similar products to the South Asian market and encourage other countries to follow in their footsteps.
“The only way to really solve the meat problem – which is a health, deforestation and morality problem – is to create animal protein,” said Tetrick in an interview.
The product has a high protein content, a diversified amino acid composition, without antibiotics and little microbiological content, such as salmonella or E.coli.
Eat Just is also trying to guarantee product approval in other markets, such as the USA, but the reality is different. Tedrick explains that what set Singapore apart from the rest was its “straight-forward mentality and strictness”.
In the US, the cell-based meat industry is strongly opposed to traditional meat industries, which have also hampered the approval process for plant-based meat substitutes.
Despite the big step, the company is not yet able to support each family in Singapore with the degree of production it has now. Tedrick warns that he will enter the Singapore market with small steps. “Let’s start with a simple restaurant. Then we move on to five, ten, fifteen, until we eventually go into retail ”.
