The Singapore Food Agency (SFA), after inspection, authorized the sale of artificial meat produced by the American company Eat Just, according to the BBC.
This is the first such case in world practice. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which have entered the market, produce “meat” from plant material, while Eat Just gets it from the muscle cells of animals grown in laboratories.
As noted in the SFA, experts confirmed the safety of cultivated chicken, but the department’s staff will monitor the products entering the market and will continue further consultations with specialists. It is assumed that, for a start, nuggets will be made from Eat Just meat, but the exact timing is not yet known.
In the last decade, about a dozen startups have tried to establish the production of artificial meat using this technology. The largest of them, Future Meat Technologies and Memphis Meats, are also currently trying to enter the market.
One of the problems so far is the high cost of the product. So, the preliminary cost of nuggets from Eat Just will be $ 50 each, which is too expensive even for a premium product. In addition, it is not clear how consumers will react to artificial meat, who may be intimidated by such innovations in food.
Earlier it became known that due to the coronavirus epidemic in the United States increased sale of vegetable meat. From February 2 to May 2, 2020, its sales grew by 264 percent. Beyond Meat increased sales by one and a half times and the number of Impossible Foods retail outlets grew 18 times.