Lab-grown chicken makes it to the shelves

Could you differentiate between meat grown in the lab via a scientific process and organic meat? The CEO of Eat Just, a California-based startup, wants to ensure that you don’t. Singapore approved the world’s first lab-grown chicken for human consumption by the end of 2020.

“We have the freedom to sell across Singapore, whether retail, food service, hawkers, you name it,” Tetrick said in an interview with CNBC. The company aims to cater to vegans by selling meat that doesn’t involve animals’ slaughter or abuse.

“The idea was: we’re going to start a food company that takes the animal, the live animal, out of the equation of the food system,” he said.

The process to create the meat involves obtaining chicken cells through a biopsy, fresh meat, or a feather and then processing the cells into minced meat. The whole process can take up to 14 days.

The development comes as the demand for alternatives to meat products such as plant-based meat continues to rise, especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic, which began in part due to China’s wet markets. It is expected that the alternative meat market could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars within a decade.

Read More: KFC is now testing plant-based chicken.’

Source: CNBC