At Madame Fan restaurant, in the heart of Singapore, you can already order it: cultured chicken. It was grown in a bioreactor from chicken stem cells. Every Thursday between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. you can order a portion of cultured meat nuggets. First come, first served; quantities are limited.
But that is about to change: this month, Good Meat, part of the American company Eat Just, started building a factory with a 6,000 liter bioreactor. From next year, tens of thousands of kilos of breeding chicken should be produced every year.
You certainly don’t feed the entire country with that, but Mirte Gosker, of the Asian department of the international think tank Good Food Institute, thinks it’s good news. “Scaling up the cultured meat industry is a crucial step towards food security. It combats environmental degradation and global poverty. Singapore shows how to eat meat without industrial livestock farming and without cutting down the rainforest.”
In 2020, Singapore approved Eat Just’s cultured chicken meat. This makes it the first and as yet only country in the world where cultured meat is allowed. That’s no coincidence. Singapore is a city-state. About 6 million people live on an area of 50 by 27 kilometers. Agriculture is practiced on only 1 percent of the country. Singapore therefore imports 90 percent of its food. Because this makes the state vulnerable, Singapore announced in 2019 that it wants to be 30 percent self-sufficient in food by 2030.
Latest chicken stocks
Since the disruptions in the international food transport chains due to the corona and Ukraine crises, this aim has only become more pressing. Singapore was turned upside down at the beginning of June because Malaysia could no longer supply the beloved chicken. Due to shortages of animal feed, the neighboring country had to reduce chicken production and the Malaysian government decided to suspend exports for a few weeks. Because a third of all chicken in Singapore comes from Malaysia, the sudden export stop led to a run on the last chicken stocks. Food stalls had to temporarily close, prices skyrocketed and menus were scrapped. Exports have now resumed, but the announcement of the breeding chicken factory could not have come at a better time.
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According to Nikkei Asia, an influential Japanese news consortium, Singapore is fast becoming the Silicon Valley of food tech. The city-state not only sees great benefit in cultured meat, but is investing in the entire spectrum of alternative protein production. Producers expect that meat substitutes based on soybeans, cashew nuts, mushrooms and protein-rich insects will increasingly be on the menu in the future. State-owned investment company Temasek has invested $8 billion (7.6 billion euros) in developing this type of food since 2013.
Mark Post, professor of vascular physiology at Maastricht University and founder of cultured meat company Mosa Meat, looks positively at the developments in Singapore. A comparison with Silicon Valley is too much honor for him. “There are only two homegrown inventors, Shiok Meats and TurtleTree. But Singapore has responded swiftly to developments by quickly granting production approval. That is a good incentive for the entire sector. It is good that many people are taking it seriously.”
Aggressive Marketing
The Eat Just company is not without a doubt. In 2018, founder Josh Tetrick had a clash with the Dutch food safety authorities because he tried to introduce a cultured meat sausage on a small scale before there were European rules for it. “Tetrick has an aggressive marketing method. He wants to be first at all costs,” Keri Matwick, a food philosopher at Singapore’s Nanyang University of Technology, told the online magazine. Southeast Asia Globe†
“We were all surprised that Singapore’s Eat Just sought approval based on an ancient cell growth technique using blood cells from calf embryos,” said Mark Post over the phone. “The rest of the industry was still busy clearing the manufacturing process from the use of calf fetus serum.”
That is now possible. Eat Just has stated that it also uses the new techniques. “But even then,” says Post, “the speed at which they produce cultured meat comes at the expense of quality. Eat Just only grows a few cells and processes them into a largely plant-based product. That is still possible for chicken nuggets, chicken does not have much taste. But when growing a steak, you can’t get away with it that way. Our process takes longer. We grow meat from muscle tissue cells, and in the growth process we feed the tissue as naturally as possible to grow a nice steak.”
Post expects that the European Food Safety Authority will grant the first approvals for European cultured meat within three years.
farmed shellfish
By then you can already have farm-raised shellfish on your plate in Singapore. The Shiok Meats company is well advanced with the development of cell-grown shrimp, crab and lobster. Founders Sandhya Shiram and Ka Yi Ling, both stem cell biologists, expect their farmed shellfish to be on the menu in Singapore by 2023. Now the production of their shrimp costs $5,000 per kilo, and therefore they will not be immediately available to everyone. But experts expect it won’t be long before lab-grown meat prices fall.
Scientists agree that cultured meat is sustainable, especially in comparison with regular slaughtered meat. If cultured meat bioreactors get their energy from the sun or wind, the damage to the environment will be small, research bureau CE Delft concluded in 2021. The climate footprint will be 17, 52 and 92 percent lower, compared to intensive farming of chickens, pigs and cows.
Production costs will have fallen significantly by 2030. “70 percent of all agricultural land is used for the production of animal feed,” says Post. “If we massively switch to cultured meat, only 10 percent of the land would be needed.”
Is cultured meat the holy grail for a sustainable future? Post: “If you ask me as a scientist, I would say: in the context of the environment, animal welfare and the climate, it is best for everyone to become vegetarian. And I’m talking about switching to a diet with real soybeans and grains and not those fake products. But then I also say: good luck with it! So that’s not going to happen. Then we won’t get there on time. In China and India, more and more people are eating meat. Cultured meat is therefore a game changer for the world food problem. If it is developed further, there will be enough to feed 10 billion people.”
In Asia, more countries are focusing on new food technology. Post does not expect Singapore to be a major player. “Korea, Japan and China are also active. And don’t forget India. That already has a developed medical industry. As a result, they have everything needed for the development of cultured meat. The country is lagging behind now, but once they pick up steam, they can grow up quickly.”
Firmer than tofu
Erwin Bolwidt, a Dutch software engineer living in Singapore, at the request of NRC breeding chicken dumplings from Madame Fan. The meal cost 27.98 Singapore dollars, about 19 euros. “I received a nice lunch box,” he wrote. “The dumplings were very good. They had many ingredients and spices. The chicken pieces in the dumpling were a bit small. The texture was a bit looser than I’m used to with chicken, but the pieces were firmer than tofu.”
In December 2020, research company YouGov conducted a poll of 1,068 Singaporeans. At the time, many residents had reservations about the quality and safety of the cultured meat. Of them, 42 percent wouldn’t want to eat it, and 14 percent had doubts. It is not known whether the recent chicken shortage has increased the enthusiasm for farmed chicken.