The first cultivated meat product for retail shoppers went on sale last week in Singapore.
US-based GOOD Meat announced that it has partnered with Huber’s Butchery in Singapore to sell a new, lower cost formulation of its product using just 3% cultivated chicken, a substantial shift from the company’s roughly 70 percent-cultivated debut product.
This new product – GOOD Meat 3 – will be available in the freezer section of Huber’s Butchery for the remainder of 2024, and will be priced at $7.20 SGD for a 120 gram package.
The announcement comes amid escalating contention about cultivated meat across different countries and regions. Earlier this month, Florida signed a bill into law criminalising the sale of cultivated meat in that state, while on the other side of the fence, South Korea recently established a “regulation-free zone” to foster innovation for cultivated meat and biotech firms.
Up till now, GOOD Meat had been producing and selling its chicken in a campaign-style model since receiving the world’s first regulatory approval in 2020 in Singapore, getting the product to consumers via high-end restaurants, food delivery apps, and popular hawker stalls.
Since then, products receiving approval to sell include cultivated beef from Aleph Farms in Israel and cultivated quail from Vow, which is available exclusively at select high-end restaurants in Singapore. Meanwhile, countries including Australia, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand are actively laying the groundwork for future approvals.
GOOD Meat says that using a smaller percentage of cultivated chicken in combination with plant proteins helps reduce production costs, one of the biggest challenges to scaling the cultivated meat industry.
The company also said that sensory testing on the hybrid product has yielded, “exceptional feedback on measures such as taste, texture, and appearance”.
“This is a historic day, for our company, for the cultivated meat industry, and for Singaporeans who want to try GOOD Meat 3,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, the parent company of GOOD Meat. “Before today, cultivated meat had never been available in retail stores for regular people to buy, and now it is.
“This year, we will sell more servings of cultivated chicken than have been sold in any year prior. At the same time, we know there is much more work to be done to prove that cultivated meat can be made at large scale, and we remain focused on that objective.”
Huber’s is a well-known producer and supplier of high-quality meat products in Singapore and has joined the country’s push for food innovation as a means to increase food security by serving GOOD Meat in its Bistro restaurant throughout 2023.
“Having the latest version of GOOD Meat 3 cultivated chicken available for retail is another step in this journey to make cultivated meat available to a bigger audience,” said Andre Huber, Executive Director, Huber’s Pte Ltd. “People will have the opportunity to prepare the product the way they want and experience how it can fit into their home cooked meals.
“We look forward to hearing feedback from our discerning customers so that we can work with GOOD Meat to continuously improve the product.”
The Good Food Institute (GFI) APAC also weighed in on the announcement in a LinkedIn post, noting how GOOD Meat is the first brand to break the industry constant of cultivated meat being prepared by chefs. It also describes the company’s opting for a hybrid plant-based offering as in line with longstanding industry support for the approach.
“While GOOD Meat’s updated formulation will inevitably be viewed by some as a sign of the industry adjusting its sails amid stormy macroeconomic conditions, alt protein advocates have long said that upgrading plant-based proteins with even a small percentage of cultivated ingredients can successfully deliver the meaty flavours consumers crave without breaking the bank,” GFI APAC said.
The think tank also pointed out how Asia-based startups like ImpacFat and Meatiply are already carving out niches by developing cultivated ingredients specially designed as value-adds for plant proteins.
Moreover, Dutch cultivated meat company Meatable—which is currently awaiting regulatory approval in Singapore—has received positive feedback on its hybrid cultivated / plant protein sausages, with The Straits Times noting that when compared to conventional pork, it would be “hard for someone to tell the difference”, versus a more stark contrast with a purely plant-based version.
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