“For the first time in history, you can buy cultivated meat in retail to cook at home,” trumpeted the first line of a news release from California firm Good Meat. But it turns out it’s a single grocery in Singapore and the product is just 3% cultivated meat in combination with plant-based ingredients.
“Our newest product, Good Meat 3, is now available to buy in the frozen groceries section at Huber’s Butchery, one of Singapore’s premier producers and suppliers of high-quality meat products,” the company said. “This delicious, shredded chicken is made with 3% cultivated meat in combination with plant-based ingredients, similar to the way we’ve always made our chicken.”
Good Meat was the first cultivated meat company in the world to receive a national approval to sell, coming in December 2020 in Singapore. The company quickly started small-quantity restaurant tastings there but ended manufacturing and distribution in that country last year to further develop its technology.
Here in the States, Good Meat and Upside Foods simultaneously won USDA and FDA approvals on June 21, 2023, and both remain the only cultured meat (both making chicken) companies approved. Here, too, both companies started restaurant tastings, but neither has been able to produce enough product to launch in stores.
“Good Meat 3 gives us a way to make our cultivated meat more readily available, while we continue to scale our technology,” said Good Meat, a subsidiary of Eat Just.
We just wrote a comprehensive update on the whole landscape of cultured meat; read it here.