INTHEBLACK February/March 2024 - Magazine - Page 44
F E AT U R E
Above: A diner films a
meal featuring a
nugget made from
lab-grown chicken
meat during a media
presentation in
Singapore, the first
country to allow the
sale of meat created
without slaughtering
any animals,
December 2020.
“It’s a massive impost on the environment.”
Dr Crispin Howitt, future protein mission
lead at CSIRO, says innovations in science
and food technology will be essential in
meeting a growing demand for protein.
“As we, essentially, have no more agricultural
land available to meet this increased demand,
new forms of protein production are not
competing with existing ones – they’re actually
complementing them and helping to meet a
growing demand,” Howitt says.
“We’ve moved from calling it ‘alternative
protein’ to ‘complementary protein’, because
we are very conscious that the world may have
another two billion people to feed by 2050,”
Howitt adds.
“We’re also seeing a shift in demographics,
particularly in Asia, where more people are
moving into what are considered middle-class
incomes. We know from watching other
countries that when that kind of shift
happens, protein intake increases. It’s a simple
correlation – when you have money to spend,
you spend more on food.”
A TASTE OF SINGAPORE
The world’s first lab-grown burger was
produced in 2013 by Dutch scientist Professor
Mark Post of Maastricht University. It cost
44 INTHEBLACK February 2024
about US$375,000 (A$576,750) to make, due
to the ground-breaking nature of the science.
Today, there are more than 150
cultivated meat companies around the
globe, and the cost of production is
shrinking. However, it is still much higher
than conventional meat production.
A recent analysis published in the Journal
of Agriculture and Food Research suggests that
cultured meat would cost about US$63 (A$97)
a kilogram to produce in a large-scale facility.
The three major costs of production are the
cell-culture medium, bioreactors and labour.
Singapore is considered the heart of
alternative protein production, with
the country investing US$104 million
(A$160 million) in its Singapore Food
Story R&D Programme.
Mirte Gosker, managing director
Asia-Pacific of Singapore’s Good Food
Institute (GFI), says food security is a key
driver of Singapore’s investment.
“The land-scarce city-state currently imports
more than 90 per cent of its food,” she says.
“It rightly sees alternative proteins as a
potential solution to meet its ‘30 by 30’ goal of
producing at least 30 per cent of its nutritional
needs by 2030, thereby boosting resilience to
global food supply shocks.”
