adminNick Marsh in SINGAPORE
IT looks like chicken, it smells like chicken and, what do you know, it tastes like chicken.
You would never guess that the piece of meat in front of me did not come from a farm.
It was made in a laboratory on an industrial estate just a few miles down the road.
I’m in Huber’s Butchery and Bistro in Singapore, which is the only restaurant in world to have so-called cultivated meat on the menu.
Feedback from customers has been “phenomenal”, according to the restaurant’s owner.
The meat’s creator – California-based Eat Just – says it is ethical, clean and green – with no compromise on taste.
Billions of dollars are being poured into the industry, but huge question marks hang over its viability as anything beyond a novelty.
Ever since the first lab-grown burger – which cost a mere US$330,000 (£263,400) to create – was unveiled in London in 2013, dozens of companies around the world have joined the race to bring affordable cultivated meat to the market.
So far, only Eat Just has managed to get its product approved for public sale after regulators in Singapore – the only country in the world to allow lab-grown meat to be sold – gave its chicken the green light in December 2020.
But, it is still nowhere near being widely available.
“Cultivated meat is real meat, but you don’t have to slaughter an animal,” says Josh Tetrick, chief executive of Eat Just, who spoke to the BBC from San Francisco.
“This way of eating makes sense for the future,” he says.
Unlike plant-based substitutes, cultivated meat is literally meat.
The process involves extracting cells from an animal, which are then fed with nutrients such as proteins, sugars and fats.
The cells are allowed to divide and grow, before being placed in a large steel bioreactor, which acts like a fermentation tank.
After four to six weeks, the material is ‘harvested’ from the bioreactor.
Some vegetable protein is added, then it is moulded, cooked and 3-D printed to give it the necessary shape and texture.
The resulting strips of deep fried chicken on my plate of orecchiette pasta certainly tasted like the real deal, if a bit processed
As of this year, an estimated US$2.8bn has been spent on developing cultivated meat. – BBC.
Bongani Ndlovu
Mathew Masinge