EATING AWAY CLIMATE
EATING AWAY CLIMATE CHANGE? Unlike brands such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, which create plant-based alternatives, Good Meat chicken is real meat. This cell-based meat or cultivated meat, as the industry prefers to call it, is created by taking cells from animals, placing them in a bioreactor (like a microbrewery) to create real meat. Some may baulk at the idea of meat originating in a lab, but the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has given its backing by naming it as a key way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in food production. Researchers at Oxford University found that cultured meat uses 99 percent less land, 96 percent less water and 45 percent less energy to produce than conventional meat. Singapore’s citizens are already enjoying this 21st-century food, and it looks like the United States could be the next as the US Food and Drug Administration declared that it was safe for consumption. While cultured meat can’t yet be sold in Europe, it is a hot topic in Brussels. In May the European Food Safety Authority hosted an academic conference focused on assessing the risks of cell-based food. It was in Europe the first cell-based dish was created. In 2013, professor Mark Post of Maastricht University, Netherlands, unveiled a hamburger that had been created in a lab. The €250,000 price tag stopped the five ounce hamburger from immediately featuring on menus, but it showed it could be done. It paved the way for brands such as Eat Just, whose chicken dishes sell in Singapore for a more palatable SGD [€12.20]. Good Meat chicken is real meat. This cell-based meat or cultivated meat, as the industry prefers to call it, is created by taking cells from animals, placing them in a bioreactor (like a microbrewery) to create real meat Source: Eat Just While European companies can’t yet sell cultured meat to the public, it hasn’t slowed the continent’s rate of investment. While the United States is the biggest investor in cell-based food (€1.54bn), followed by Israel (€537.91m), the Netherlands comes in third spending €140.45m, and the UK and France are also in the top 10. This ingredient is so rare it was enough to make one New York chef take a 19- hour flight to Singapore to try it. In the short time Good Meat chicken has been on sale in Singapore, it has already gone through three iterations – a spongy looking chicken nugget, a larger more fibrous piece of chicken and now the chicken is three times the size, with the same fibrous meat you would find on a chicken thigh. When Chong presented me with the dish, the pasta was al dente, the sundried tomatoes and broccoli gave the dish a punch of colour, and the sliced deep-fried chicken had a golden outer layer. When I cut it with a knife, the fibres tore apart like farmed chicken, and when I first tasted it, I could have been fooled that this was like any farm chicken I’d eaten. There was an aftertaste, but if this is what Good Meat has achieved in this small amount of time, who knows where it will be in even 12 months? The reason why it tasted like real meat, is because it is. Chong said he had as many questions as anyone else when he was told about cell-based meat. “Initially I was sceptical, [but] when you understand how it’s made it really is just a piece of chicken,” said Chong. While cultured meat can’t yet be sold in Europe, it is a hot topic in Brussels. Cultured meat companies working on everything from cellbased fish sticks to foie gras are also launching across Europe, waiting for legislation to change. There’s Bluu Seafood from Germany, which is creating cell-based fish sticks; Gourmey from Paris creating cell-based foie gras; and Mirai from Switzerland, which is focusing on beef. Dutch companies Meatable and Mosa Meat (where Mark Post now works) are working on pork and beef. In preparation for cell-based meat being sold in Europe, Mosa Meat has also not only launched the world’s largest cultivated meat facility in Maastricht, Netherlands, but joined with partners in Singapore. Maarten Bosch, Mosa Meat CEO said: “The ability to produce our beef on two continents will also reduce 45
