Today Eat Just announced its GOOD Meat division has received the regulatory go-ahead to sell new types of cultivated chicken products in Singapore. The company will debut one of the new formats, a chicken breast, at the JW Marriott Singapore South Beach next week.
The green light comes just over a year after the company received the world’s first approval to sell cultivated meat from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), Singapore’s regulatory authority for food safety. Soon after, GOOD Meat set a milestone by making the first commercial sale of cultivated chicken at 1880, a private restaurant/club and social impact organization in Singapore.
As part of the announcement, GOOD Meat also committed to increased investment in its cultivated meat production capacity in Singapore over the next two years. The company said the design and manufacturing of vessels and systems that will increase its cultivated meat production capacity are already underway, and they hope to have the new infrastructure operational within the next two years. Eat Just’s cultivated meat division also committed to growing its team in Singapore across manufacturing, science, and engineering as the company moves towards scaling up its production.
The latest regulatory approval is another example of Singapore’s aggressive push into alternative proteins and cultivated meat. The effort is part of the island nation’s “30 By 30” food sovereignty initiative to scale up its capability and capacity to produce 30 percent of its food supply by 2030. And it’s not just Eat Just; other future food companies such as Perfect Day and Avant Meats are investing in building out innovation centers in the country.
Compared to Singapore, the US government has been comparatively slow to foster the next generation of alternative proteins, but that looks to be changing. In October, the USDA announced a $10 million grant award to Tufts to create an Institute for Cellular Agriculture, a flagship American cultivated protein research center of excellence, which followed a $3.5 million grant to UC Davis to establish a training and research program by the National Science Foundation. At the same time, in September, the USDA began to solicit input about what it should call cultivated meat products, a signal that it is progressing towards regulatory approval of the products.
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