The Singapore Food Agency announced Wednesday that the cultured chicken produced by U.S. company Eat Just passed its quality requirements for use in nuggets, setting the stage for a commercial launch in an Asian country.
The regulatory approval would be the first time in the world that allows a lab-grown meat manufacturer to sell its product in the commercial market, the SFA said.
Demand for alternatives to regular meat - so-called "clean meat" that is not derived from slaughtered animals - is growing because of consumer concerns about health, animal welfare and the environment.
Plant-based meat products, popularized by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, have become ubiquitous on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus.
But these cultured meat options, which are grown and enhanced from animal muscle cells in science research facilities, are still in their infancy considering steep manufacturing costs.
The San Francisco-based Eat Just, popular for its plant-based egg alternatives, disclosed that no antibiotics or harmful ingredients were added to its product.
Early-phase investors have been interested in the notion of real meat without killing animals or destroying the environment.
"For the first time, meat from real animals that don't require a single animal to be slaughtered or a single tree to be cut down can be sold," Financial Times quoted Josh Tetrick, Eat Just chief executive, as saying.
Eat Just's cultured chicken is produced at the Food Innovation and Resource Centre, a food research facility co-managed by the Enterprise Singapore and Singapore Polytechnic. The meat products will be sold as nuggets for $50 each, the company said.
Based on data by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, chicken is the world's top meat in terms of production next to pork, with almost 70 billion birds slaughtered every year.
Around the world, over two dozen companies are testing lab-developed beef, fish, and chicken in hopes of making a foray into an untested sector of the substitute meat market. According to projections by Barclays, the alternative meat market could be valued at around $140 billion by 2029.
