Good Meat recently announced that Good Meat 3, a retail cultured chicken product containing 3% lab-grown meat, will be available at its Singapore retailer Huber's Butchery from May 16, 2024. It assured consumers that this would be “available for the remainder of the period.” 2024.
This is believed to be the world's first and only retail launch of cultured meat, and at S$7.20 (US$5.36) for 120g, its pricing is still higher than conventional meat. However, it is lower than the price of the cultured chicken dish served at Restaurant 1880, which costs about S$23 (about US$17.11) per plate, after first receiving regulatory approval from the Food Authority of Singapore in 2020.
The partnership with the food service has since been discontinued, and Good Meat's parent company Eat Just has also suspended poultry production at both its own and partner facilities in Singapore, and is facing legal issues in the United States. In the midst of this, plans for a new factory were canceled.
The company's new venture is likely to help overcome these hurdles, and the Good Food Institute (GFI), an alternative meat advocacy group, believes it will be a major step forward for the region's cultured meat sector. .
“With endless options, the world will soon be the first to see how home chefs work with cultured meat. There is no better place for this,” GFI APAC Managing Director Myrte Gosker said in an emailed statement.
“With Australia and South Korea currently actively reviewing the approval of the first cultured meat products, and many other Asian countries moving to follow suit, the message to global food tech startups is: It’s clear: APAC is open for business.”
However, he is not so optimistic about this change in direction, especially considering the company's past problems, saying that the amount of cultured meat used in new products has been reduced to just 3% as opposed to traditional products. Some people find the facts particularly problematic. Previously he was 70% served by food service.
“The whole idea of looking at hybrids and blends of cultured meat and plant-based ingredients is to lower costs, of course, but in this case, even if the amount is as low as 3%, we would call it a ‘hybrid. 'Is it correct to call it '?' Professor Paul Wood, Professor of Biotechnology at Monash University and member of the CSIRO Future Protein Mission Advisory Group, told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“With 97% of the ingredients being plant-based protein, who is to say that this form of cultured meat direction will end up being just another type of plant-based protein?” “Do we need “plant-based'' as opposed to “hybrid'' or “cultivated''?
According to Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick, GOOD Meat 3 will be a “simple recipe” comprised of plant-based protein, the company's grown chicken, and “seasonings that enhance the flavor of the chicken.”
“Using a lower proportion of cultivated chicken in combination with the plant-based proteins that have always been used in our cultivated chicken products reduces the costs associated with producing cultured meat, which is one of the main challenges in scaling up. It also helps reduce the amount,” Tetrick said. formal statement.
“We're on track to sell more farmed chicken this year than we've sold in any other year in the past.”
Although the entry into retail will undoubtedly increase the likelihood that more “GOOD Meat” will be sold than ever before, the proportion contained in each serving will be reduced from 70% to 3% (i.e. (This would reduce the amount of cultured meat in each serving by more than 23 times.) , It remains to be seen whether the company will be able to sell the same amount of cultured meat alone.
teething problems
Both Good Meat and competitor Upside Foods received regulatory approval in the U.S., which was seen as a huge success, but faced significant challenges to commercialization.
Upside Foods received full USDA approval last year but has yet to significantly expand, limiting its cultured chicken offerings to one restaurant in the U.S., one day a month, and limited to 17 customers, according to Prowood.
“Teething problems are definitely something that every company that enters a new market early on faces. And here, what's happening to these companies is that every time they sell a product, they're losing money. That means there is.” [until they can scale up]” he added.
“One thing most of these companies will say is that this is a normal phase in terms of testing the market and understanding how it works for consumers, but then… The question arises as to how long it can take to test the market and incur losses.”
“We are already seeing this in the plant-based sector, take Beyond Meat as an example, which has been around for several years but suffered a loss of around US$50 million in the last quarter.
“The first players in the cultured meat industry have undoubtedly seen their struggles, and some companies have already gone out of business as a result. Being a new field means being dependent on capital, and investment funds dry up. “If no company makes money, it bodes badly for the situation.'' ”
Protein trends will be discussed in more detail at the Growth Asia Summit 2024 this July – click here to find out how you can get involved.
