A few years ago, I visited a meat cell-culture laboratory in Holland with Viva! founder Juliet Gellatley. Having worked as a molecular biologist, the laboratory environment was familiar to me. But as a long-term vegan, and having not eaten meat for almost 40 years, the pink mushy cells growing in a Petri dish may as well have been from another planet!
At first, it looked like science fiction – meat grown in a laboratory. But cultured ‘lab’ meat is now a very real prospect. In December 2020, ‘chicken bites’, produced by the US company Eat Just, passed safety reviews and were launched in a Singapore restaurant retailing at around £13 for a set meal. Eat Just’s chief executive, Josh Tetrick, says the plan is to make the product available in other restaurants in Singapore next year and in retail stores by late 2022.