Cultivated Chicken Enters the Market and Mouths of Singapore
The Singapore Food Agency approved GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken, making it the first country to bring cultivated meat for human consumption to market
Image via GOOD Meat
By Delaney Khung
August 9, 2021
As of December 19, 2020, Singapore consumers can eat actual chicken meat without causing any harm to an animal. This chicken protein is not a vegan or vegetarian plant-based version but is actual chicken meat due to its identical cellular structure (it even contains the same allergens as traditional chicken meat). Instead of sacrificing its life for consumption though, a chicken must only sacrifice one cell. This chicken meat, introduced by GOOD Meat, is the first cultivated meat product approved for sale for human consumption.
Cultivated meat falls within one of nine cleantech sectors, titled Clean Food by Saoradh Enterprise Partners. The process that brings cultivated meat to our dinner tables begins by sourcing a small number of animal stem cells from a non-GMO chicken. These cells grow and multiply with the addition of nutrients like carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and vitamins — a process similar to brewing beer or yeast. In this process, one cell multiplies into trillions and becomes the chicken nuggets, tenders, sausages, and many other chicken ingredients we love.
The company GOOD Meat is a sub-brand of JUST Egg: a company providing plant-based egg substitutes since its foundation in 2011. This San Francisco startup was co-founded by Joshua Tetrick and now employs over 213 employees and generates $23 million in trailing twelve-month (TTM) total revenue, according to Pitchbook. Their 1,000 liter Singapore facility will produce thousands of pounds of cultivated chicken in 2021; however, they currently price their chicken competitively, and to breakeven, production capacity must increase to more than 50,000 liters.
However, market and policy advances are taking place to help increase demand and, in turn, production capacity. Currently, a social club, 1880, and a Cantonese restaurant, Madame Fan, offer dishes containing GOOD Meat’s product at a competitive US$16.94. The company is also developing additional cultivated meat alternatives based on stem cells from animal sources such as Californian pasture-raised cattle and Wagyu from a Toriyama farm in Japan. Policy advances include framework development by the USDA and FDA to approve cultivated meat in the United States.
This current and foreseeable increase in cultivated meat production (as a supplement to traditional meat production) is a win for the environment. A study titled Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production found that cultured meat reduces energy use by 7 to 45%, greenhouse gas production by 78 to 96%, land use by 99%, and water use by 82 to 96%. Therefore, this market entry largely benefits the environment in addition to consumers looking for meat alternatives.
Delaney Khung is an analyst at SEP and our Topic Reports Lead.