A first in Singapore: it is not only possible to eat farmed chicken meat there on a limited scale. The Good Meat company has started building a factory with a bioreactor that will make dozens of tons of cultured chicken meat. They should be on the market next year.
Singapore is a city-state with a high population density and a small area where hardly any food can be grown. Especially now that the vulnerabilities of globalization are apparent and supply lines are less secure, domestic food production is an attractive alternative.
Meat plays an important role in the global climate problem, land depletion, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of biodiversity. A solution is not easy. As the world population grows, so does global prosperity. That is a double boost for meat consumption: when people make the step from poverty to the lower middle class, the demand for meat increases. The production of meat now takes place on an industrial scale. The animal suffering that comes with this is indescribable.
The best remedy would be to stop eating meat, possibly supplementing the diet with substances that compensate for the loss of meat. But this premise clashes with reality: in the prosperous West it is difficult enough to reduce meat consumption, let alone in countries that can finally make the step towards greater prosperity. Meat substitutes are a good alternative, and they keep getting better. But here too the question is whether a sufficient proportion of the world’s population outside the West can be tempted to do this in a short enough period of time to make any difference.
Cultured meat is an alternative. This food is also being worked on in the Netherlands. Meat is made from animal cells for which the animal itself is no longer or hardly needed, nor the feed, the emissions or the suffering. The government is allocating 60 million euros for further research and development of meat and dairy products that could come on the market in the foreseeable future.
Whether that is a good thing seems at first sight a superfluous question: if it can be produced profitably and safely on the free market and consumers are happy to buy it, then it should be there. But there are bigger issues at stake here: climate change and public health in particular.
It seems that the production of cultured meat will be much less harmful to the environment, certainly when the scale is increased, there is room for innovation and the energy used is also green again. Public health is an aspect that should be closely monitored with any introduction of any new food. Governments have enough resources and tools at their disposal for all this. And now that the Dutch state – and it is certainly not the only one – is co-investing, there may be a little more involvement.
Moreover, it is especially important not to limit the discourse on pros and cons to the Netherlands. On a global scale, severely curtailing the current factory farming industry can make a significant difference. If the acceptance of cultured meat as an alternative can help with this, that is certainly a plus. We need to row hard to prevent a climate catastrophe. And any belt is welcome.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 29, 2022