On this day in vegan history · December 2, 2020
Singapore Clears the World's First Cultured Chicken
A regulator looked at chicken grown from real animal cells in a steel tank, ran the safety numbers for two years, and said yes before anyone else on Earth had.
The facts
- Date of approval
- December 2, 2020
- Regulator
- Singapore Food Agency
- Product
- GOOD Meat cultured chicken bites, made by Eat Just
- First sale
- Restaurant 1880, Singapore, December 19, 2020
On December 2, 2020, the Singapore Food Agency approved chicken bites made by the San Francisco company Eat Just as safe to sell, the first time any government had cleared cultured meat for the market. The product, branded GOOD Meat, was grown from animal cells across more than 20 production runs in 1,200-liter bioreactors, without antibiotics, and an outside panel of scientists checked it for safety and nutrition before the ruling. Seventeen days later, on December 19, 2020, the private members' club 1880 in Singapore served it to diners, the first commercial sale of meat that had never come from a slaughtered animal. Eat Just had spent about two years working through Singapore's novel food process to get there.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Singapore has long been a leader in innovation of all kinds, from information technology to biologics to now leading the world in building a healthier, safer food system.
Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just, December 1, 2020
Source: TechCrunch
Why it still matters
It proved cultured meat could clear a real food safety review, not just a lab demo, and gave every other regulator on the planet a precedent to point to when the next approval came up.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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