Lab-grown meat gets world’s first regulatory OK
Path is clear for ‘cultured chicken’ in US
A lab-grown meat product received the world’s first regulatory approval as food safety officials in Singapore cleared the way for the sale of “cultured chicken” made by U.S. startup Eat Just, the company said Wednesday.
The product, real chicken made from animal cells and grown in a controlled environment, aims to provide meat in a sustainable and ethically produced way. And unlike plant-based alternatives from other companies like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, it’s the real deal.
“I’m sure that our regulatory approval for cultured meat will be the first of many in Singapore and in countries around the globe,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, said in a statement.
The company plans to launch its “chicken bites” product first in restaurants in Singapore with the goal to expand directly to consumers.
“Today’s regulatory achievement involved an iterative and extensive safety review by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), Singapore’s regulatory authority entrusted with ensuring a safe food supply. During this process, Eat Just complied with SFA’s food safety requirements for the assessment of novel foods,” the company said in a statement.
While plant-based “meats” have taken hold in the U.S., lab-grown products are still in their early stages of development and aren’t yet sold in the U.S.
In an interview with Reuters, Tetrick said Singapore was a “good bit” ahead of the United States in its regulatory approval but the company was in talks with U.S. regulators.
“I would imagine what will happen is the U.S., Western Europe and others will see what Singapore has been able to do, the rigors of the framework that they put together. And I would imagine that they will try to use it as a template to put their own framework together,” he told the news agency.
“A new space race for the future of food is underway,” Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the nonprofit The Good Food Institute, which focuses on meat alternatives, said in a statement. “As nations race to divorce meat production from industrial animal agriculture, countries that delay their investment in this bright food future risk getting left behind.”
The company touts its product as “safe, healthy and more sustainable.” No animals are killed in the process. Instead, small amounts of an animal’s cells are harvested and fed amino acids, carbohydrates, minerals, fats and vitamins. “The entire process takes place in a safe and controlled environment, much like a beer brewery,” Eat Just says on its website.
The company said it performed 20 production runs in its 1,200-liter bioreactors to demonstrate its safety to food regulators. Those tests showed the product met the same safety standards as traditional poultry meat and had “extremely low and significantly cleaner microbiological content than conventional chicken,” Eat Just said.
The company said the product also is grown more efficiently than livestock because only the parts of the animal that are eaten are produced.
Chicken, rather than other meats, are the first focus of Eat Just because of its growing global demand, the company said.