On Friday (March 29), Singapore’s first cell-based meat company, Shiok Meats, revealed its lab-grown shrimp dumplings on the Food Disruption and Sustainability Summit (DFSS).
Only eight dumplings were presented on the summit, however the high-tech dim sum took months to arrange and value A$5,000.
Only three people at the revealing got to try it – all three are advisors to Shiok Meats, a food technology startup that focuses on growing seafood from stem cells. Shiok shrimp dumpling is their first product.
The reporter only smelled the smell as Shiok Meats CTO Ling Ka Yi took the noodles out of the steamer. Yes, they did smell like shrimp.
“The three advisors who tried it definitely said it tasted like shrimp. So we’re very pleased,” said Shiok Meats CEO Sandhya Sriram.
Founded in August last yr, Singapore-based Shiok Meats is the primary cell-based meat company in Southeast Asia. It is the brainchild of two stem cell biologists: Dr. Sriram (33) and Dr. Ling (31).
While cell-based meat firms will not be recent, Memphis Meats has been operating since 2015, and most of them are based within the United States.
“Currently, shrimp are raised on farms in dirty water and injected with antibiotics and hormones to keep them clean and bigger. We had to find very specific shrimp farms that would extract pure shrimp from stem cells,” said Dr. Sriram.
According to Dr. Sriram, cell-based meat accommodates fewer toxins and is less harmful to the Earth’s resources.
“The company’s vision is to completely replace farmed and wild shrimp. (We want to have) Shiok shrimp in supermarkets, shopping malls, restaurants, everything,” she said.
For next yr, they plan to scale back production costs 100 times.
Stem cells have to be placed in a nutrient mixture for the cells to grow into meat, but this solution is currently too expensive to be mass-produced.
Therefore, it cost the corporate about A$5,000 to create eight dumplings.
“If we can hit that magic elixir, the price (for eight noodles) will be between A$5,000 and A$50,” she said.
He estimates it’s going to take a minimum of five years for them to achieve the mass market, but Shiok Meats is in talks with three premium restaurants to make use of their shrimp by the top of next yr.
Many investors have already expressed interest in Shiok Meats, although most of them are based outside Asia.
“In the two and a half months since we started the company, we have raised just over half a million, (but) most of that amount is money from the US,” Dr. Sriram said.
Members of the general public CNA spoke to were generally open to trying cell-based meat.
National University of Singapore student Cheong Yinn Shan, 24, said: “I would definitely like to try it. The meat industry emits a lot of greenhouse gases and has a large water footprint, so I will support any innovation to reduce our society’s dependence on factory-farmed meat.”
Source : Asia News Channel
