For years, there’s been a crowded market of startups racing to bring the first lab-grown meat to market — think Aleph Farms, JUST, and the Bill Gates-funded Memphis Meats.
But bringing a product to supermarket shelves has remained elusive.
But, according to a news feature, a Singaporean startup called Shiok Meats may be poised to be the first company in the world to actually sell a lab-grown meat.
Shiok is focusing its energy on shrimp, an industry that’s been plagued by human slavery and profound environmental concerns.
Shiok Meats is a cell-based clean meat company, the first of its kind in Singapore and South-East Asia. Their mission is to bring delicious, clean and healthy seafood and meats by harvesting from cells instead of animals. Shiok Meats will bring cell-based crustacean meats (shrimp, crab, lobster) to your table.
Their meats are animal-, health- and environment-friendly with the same taste, texture, more nutrients and no cruelty.
Though numerous startups have created prototype cultured meats, it’s remained prohibitively expensive.
Siok is getting close. It’s brought the price per pound down from $2,268 per pound to just $1,588 and says it’ll be a hundred times cheaper than that by next year.
If they can pull it off — admittedly a big if; however, the precise timeline of when it would hit the market is still unclear.
Reference- LA Times, Shiok Meats website & PR, The Guardian, Science Direct