The Future of Meat: Cultivated Chicken Makes Its Debut at a Singaporean Butcher

Plump sun-dried tomatoes, springy pasta, and crispy chicken… To the uninitiated, this looked like a regular bistro dish, but what’s different about this bowl of pasta is that the chicken didn’t originate from a farm, but a lab. Huber’s Butchery in the upmarket enclave of Dempsey, Singapore, is the first butcher in the world to sell cultivated meat. Today, I was getting a glimpse of the future.

A Breakthrough in Cultivated Meat

On 19 December 2020, the Singaporean government gave the US company Eat Just approval to sell cultivated meat to the public. Eat Just’s Good Meat chicken has been served at hotels, private members’ clubs, and street food stalls, but by serving it at this bistro, this is the first time it has been sold by a butcher.

Introducing the Next Generation Ingredient

Chef Chong Jun Xiang, who worked at the private members club 1880 in Singapore, is now tasked with introducing this next-generation ingredient to diners. The R&D chef is usually working at a kitchen in Bedok above Eat Just’s manufacturing facility, but today he is whipping up a vegetable orecchiette topped with crispy cultivated chicken in the kitchen of Huber’s bistro ready for me to test. This ingredient is so rare it was enough to make one New York chef take a 19-hour flight to Singapore to try it.

The Evolution of Good Meat Chicken

In the short time Good Meat chicken has been on sale in Singapore, it has already gone through three iterations — a spongy looking chicken nugget, a larger more fibrous piece of chicken, and now the chicken is three times the size, with the same fibrous meat you would find on a chicken thigh.

A Taste of the Future

When Chong presented me with the dish, the pasta was al dente, the sundried tomatoes and broccoli gave the dish a punch of colour, and the sliced deep-fried chicken had a golden outer layer. When I cut it with a knife, the fibres tore apart like farmed chicken, and when I first tasted it, I could have been fooled that this was like any farm chicken I’d eaten. There was an aftertaste, but if this is what Good Meat has achieved in this small amount of time, who knows where it will be in even 12 months?

Real Meat from a Lab

The reason why it tasted like real meat is because it is. Chong said he had as many questions as anyone else when he was told about cell-based meat. “Initially I was skeptical, [but] when you understand how it’s made it really is just a piece of chicken,” said Chong. Unlike brands such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, which create plant-based alternatives, Good Meat chicken is real meat. This cell-based meat or cultivated meat, as the industry prefers to call it, is created by taking cells from animals, placing them in a bioreactor (like a microbrewery) to create real meat.

A Sustainable Solution

Some may balk at the idea of meat originating in a lab, but the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has given its backing by naming it as a key way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in food production. Researchers at Oxford University found that cultured meat uses 99 percent less land, 96 percent less water, and 45 percent less energy to produce than conventional meat.

A Global Movement

Singapore’s citizens are already enjoying this 21st-century food, and it looks like the United States could be next as the US Food and Drug Administration declared that it was safe for consumption. While cultured meat can’t yet be sold in Europe, it is a hot topic in Brussels. In May, the European Food Safety Authority hosted an academic conference focused on assessing the risks of cell-based food. It was in Europe the first cell-based dish was created. In 2013, professor Mark Post of Maastricht University, Netherlands, unveiled a hamburger that had been created in a lab.

Investing in the Future

While European companies can’t yet sell cultured meat to the public, it hasn’t slowed the continent’s rate of investment. While the United States is the biggest investor in cell-based food, followed by Israel, the Netherlands comes in third spending €140.45m, and the UK and France are also in the top 10. Cultured meat companies working on everything from cell-based fish sticks to foie gras are also launching across Europe, waiting for legislation to change.

Singapore’s Role in the Food Tech Revolution

As a small island-state, Singapore can pivot faster than most countries. But as it imports 90 percent of its food, food security has long been on its radar. The pandemic couldn’t have helped but give it a sharper focus, and the country has set itself the goal of producing 30 percent of its food by 2030, which means that it has become a hub for food tech.

Public Acceptance is Key

For cultivated meat to be successful, the Singaporean public needs to be on board. A YouGov survey in 2018 found that while 51 percent of Singaporeans said they probably wouldn’t eat artificial meat, a third of millennials said they would happily consume it. Yet, two months after Good Meat started selling cultivated chicken in Singapore, Singaporean cell-based shellfish company Shiok Meats surveyed the public in March 2021 and found that 78 percent of Singaporeans said they were open to eating cell-based seafood.

Getting People to Try It

To remove the ‘yuk’ factor associated with cell-based food, Eat Just founder Josh Tetrick said that the best way is to get people to try it. Tetrick is choosing to make a small loss on each $18 dish that he sells, just so he can get it into the hands of consumers. Tetrick disrupted the food industry with a plant-based egg, but he said that with so many meat-eaters, you need cultured meat as well to really move the needle.

Considerations for Human Health

While cell-based meat is impressive, UK-based dietitian Meaghan Greenwood said that cell-based meat may not contain everything that we need for human health. “It may be missing some of the essential fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins [that are] important for human health,” said Greenwood. “As the technology for producing cell-based meat continues to develop, it is likely that any nutritional differences between cell-based and conventional meat will be minimized.”

A Hopeful Future for Cultivated Meat

Andre Huber, executive director of Singapore’s Huber’s Butchery, has followed Good Meat’s journey from the start. It wasn’t until the second-generation Swiss butcher tasted the third version of the cultivated chicken that he agreed to sell it in his restaurant. “The texture [of the nugget] was too mushy. It wasn’t as fibrous as chicken. But the latest version is almost 90 percent like real chicken,” said Huber. Huber hopes that cultivated chicken will work alongside conventional meat and people in the future can use both in their diet.

While Eat Just’s plans are big, the supply is holding them back. Huber’s bistro only has enough stock to serve a handful of diners. When the Singapore facility opens, it is expected to produce tens of thousands of pounds a year of meat, but this still won’t be enough to service a population of 5.9 million. The journey towards making cultivated meat a staple on dinner tables worldwide is just beginning, and the potential for a more sustainable and ethical food system looks promising.