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Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valley backs off

Global funding in the cultured meat industry dropped by 75% in the last year. Singapore sees its chance to become a world leader, backing local and international firms.

“But it can serve as the place where companies from all around the world come to work with top-tier research agencies and food-tech partners to refine their formulations, eliminate inefficiencies in their manufacturing process, and explore new techniques and ingredients that could help them drive down costs.” Singapore “invested very heavily in getting technological expertise into its government regulatory departments,” Simon Eassom, chief executive of Food Frontier, an Australia-based think tank, told Rest of World. Although prices in the nascent industry have declined since the first lab-grown beef burger debuted in 2013 at a staggering $330,000, they still need to fall to under $10 per kilo — roughly a tenth of current costs — to be competitive in the mass market, estimates the Good Food Institute.

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