The phrase “It looks like chicken, it smells like chicken, and it tastes like chicken, but it’s not chicken.” makes sense when we talk about the phenomenon of cultured meat. Since it was presented in London in 2013, the first lab-grown hamburgerdozens of companies around the world have joined the race to commercialize cultured meat at reasonable prices.
At that moment, The creation of the sandwich cost a whopping $330,000.. For this reason, billions of dollars are being invested in improving and strengthening this industry, but a decade after that presentation, there are big questions about its long-term viability.
On the other hand, there is only one gastronomic space on the entire planet that offers a dish with these characteristics: Huber’s Butchery and Bistro in Singapore. The Asian venue is the only restaurant in the world that offers “cultured meat” on the menu.
Unlike plant-based substitutes, cultured meat is literally meat. The process consists of extracting cells from an animal, which are then fed with nutrients such as proteins, sugars and fats in the laboratory. The cells are then allowed to divide and grow, before being placed in a large steel bioreactor, which acts as a fermentation tank. After weeks, the material is “harvested” from the bioreactor and vegetable protein is added. Then it is molded, fired to give it the necessary shape and texture.
The supplier and creator of meat, the company California-based Eat Just ensures that your product manages to be ethical, clean and ecological, without sacrificing flavor. “Cultured meat is real meat, but you don’t have to slaughter an animal,” I say. Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just, who spoke to the BBC from San Francisco, adding: “This way of eating makes sense for the future.” In this regard, customer feedback has been “phenomenal,” said the owner of the oriental restaurant.
so far only Eat Just has succeeded in getting its product approved for sale to the public after regulators in Singapore, the only country in the world that allows the sale of lab-grown meat, gave its chicken the green light in December 2020. That partnership has continued. for months and this year Huber’s began offering a chicken sandwich and chicken pasta dish to the general public, albeit only once a week.
“It’s meat, it’s perfect!” An Italian student who tried the farmed chicken commented to the British portal. Her only objection was that the chicken be served with pasta, which is not normally the case in Italy. Another Singaporean diner said he was surprised that farmed chicken looked so much like real meat. “It’s legit,” he said, adding: “I wouldn’t know where it came from. My only concern would be the cost.”
He chicken pasta dish costs almost 13 dollars, but it is not related to the cost of producing this type of meat. Eat Just would not confirm how much it spends on making its European-grown chicken, but at the moment the company’s production capacity is 3 kg per week for Singapore. When you compare that to the 4,000 to 5,000 kg of conventional chicken that is sold in the same restaurant, you get an idea of the scale of the task that the company must face.
“Making meat in this way is necessary and very uncertain,” said the Eat Just manager and clarified: “It is not easy. It’s complicated. It is something that is not guaranteed and it may not work. But the other option for us would be to do nothing. So we decided to gamble and give it a try.” Many investors have decided to make that same bet. It is estimated that so far this year 2.8 billion dollars have been invested in the development of cultured meat.
However, if trying to make cultured meat more than a niche alternative for the wealthy in the developed world is going to depend on investment from private companies, it may not be enough. Governments, Tetrick noted, will need to invest “a significant amount of public money” in farmed meat so that it can compete with conventional meat. So far, no country outside of Singapore has authorized the sale of cultured meat, let alone committed to any major investment.
by RN
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