SINGAPORE—Singapore has given U.S. start-up Eat Just the green light to sell its lab-grown chicken meat, in what the firm says is the world’s first regulatory approval for so-called clean meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals.
The meat, to be sold as nuggets, will be priced at premium chicken prices when sales begin at a restaurant in Singapore “in the very near term,” co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick said.
Demand for alternatives to regular meat is surging due to concerns about health, animal welfare, and the environment. Plant-based substitutes, popularized by the likes of Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Quorn, are increasingly found on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus.
But so-called clean or cultured meat, which is grown from animal muscle cells in a lab, is still at a nascent stage, given high production costs.
Tetrick said the San Francisco-based firm is also talking to 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 said in an interview.
The Singapore Food Agency said it had reviewed data relating to process, manufacturing control, and safety testing before granting approval.
Eat Just said it will manufacture the product in Singapore, where it also plans to start making a mung bean-based egg substitute it’s been selling commercially in the United States.
Founded in 2011, Eat Just counts Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing and Singapore state investor Temasek among its backers. The company has raised more than $300 million since its inception, Tetrick said, and is valued at roughly $1.2 billion.
It’s targeting profitability at an operating income level before the end of 2021 and hopes to go public soon after, he added.
Globally more than two dozen firms are testing lab-grown fish, beef, and chicken, hoping to break into an unproven segment of the alternative meat market, which Barclays estimates could be worth $140 billion by 2029.
Competitors have also attracted some eye-catching investors.
U.S.-based Memphis Meats raised funds this year in a deal led by Japan’s SoftBank Group and Temasek, and also counts Bill Gates and Richard Branson among its backers.
Singapore’s Shiok Meats, which aims to become the first company to sell lab-grown shrimp, is backed by Henry Soesanto of the Philippines’s Monde Nissin Corp., which also owns Quorn.
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