The back-to-back bans on the making or sale of cultivated meat in Florida and Alabama are getting answered around the world in Singapore.
That’s where GOOD Meat begins the first retail sales of cultivated chicken, a product called GOOD Meat 3. It’s being sold at retail at Huber’s Butchery in Singapore under a partnership involving GOOD Meat and Huber’s.
Previously in the United States, some rarely cultivated meat sales were at two high-end restaurants in San Francisco and Washington D.C., but those were discontinued.
GOOD Meat is the cultivated meat unit of the food technology company Eat Just Inc.
GOOD Meat announced on May 15 that for the first time ever, cultivated meat will be sold at retail for shoppers to purchase and take home to cook.
GOOD Meat and Huber’s Butchery are partnering in the world-exclusive launch in Singapore to sell a new, lower-cost formulation using just 3 percent cultivated chicken while maintaining the same taste, texture and experience as conventional chicken.
This new product, GOOD Meat 3, is now available in the freezer section of Huber’s Butchery for the remainder of 2024 and will be priced at SGD 7.20 for a 120-gram package. That’s about $5.35 in U.S. Dollars, depending on the currency exchange.
The partners said GOOD Meat 3 was developed to meet strong consumer demand for cultivated meat in Singapore and to create opportunities for people to try it in the comfort of their own homes.
They say using a smaller percentage of cultivated chicken in combination with plant proteins, which have always been used in GOOD Meat cultivated chicken products, also helps reduce costs associated with the production of cultivated meat, one of the main challenges that exist to scaling this developing industry.
Consumer studies of cultivated meat reportedly show “tasting is believing, “which remains true for GOOD Meat 3. Sensory testing has yielded exceptional feedback on measures such as taste, texture and appearance, a result of GOOD Meat’s patented production process as well as the simple recipe of plant proteins, cultivated chicken, and seasonings that flavor the chicken.
“This is a historic day for our company, for the cultivated meat industry, and for Singaporeans who want to try GOOD Meat,” 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 in any prior year. At the same time, we know there is much more work to prove that cultivated meat can be made at large scale, and we remain focused on that objective.”
After an extensive renovation, the GOOD Meat 3 will officially launch as part of Huber’s grand re-opening. The retail outlet is well-known in Singapore and beyond as a premier producer and supplier of high-quality meat products and has joined the country’s push for food innovation to increase food security.
“Having the latest version of GOOD Meat 3 cultivated chicken available for retail is another step in making 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 how 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 improve the product continuously.”
The retail sales announcement comes on the heels of actions in the United States, where GOOD Meat is based, to restrict or outright ban cultivated meat production and sales. Earlier this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law criminalizing the sale of cultivated meat in that state, a move that threatens to curtail consumer freedom and hinder innovation. In contrast, countries like Singapore and South Korea, which recently established a “regulation-free zone” to foster innovation for cultivated meat and biotech firms, have embraced novel food technologies that have the potential to help address problems like climate change, food security, and animal suffering.
Since 2020, when Singapore granted GOOD Meat the world’s first regulatory approval for cultivated meat, GOOD Meat has been producing and selling its chicken in a campaign-style model, offering opportunities to try cultivated chicken in fine dining establishments, via food delivery apps, at beloved hawker stalls, and of course, in the Bistro at Huber’s Butchery.
More than a year ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDFA) completed its pre-market evaluation of food made from cultured animal cells by GOOD Meat. FDA said the firm uses animal cell culture technology to take living cells from chickens and grow the cells in a controlled environment to make the cultured animal cell food.
And the FDA had no more questions about it.
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