GOOD Meat Breaks Ground

Nearly two years ago, Kiah sat down to dinner with her friends Videep and Jack and began to change forever how the world eats.

Just after 7 on that December evening at the Singaporean restaurant 1880, Kiah and her friends from the United World College of South East Asia dined in an intimate restaurant on chicken and waffles and chicken bao.

The evening was so routine, so small, you’d be forgiven for forgetting what an extraordinary feat this all was. For the first time in the history of humankind, here was meat, real meat, made without slaughtering a single animal.

And now, less than two years later, here’s Kiah again witnessing history. This time, though, the scale is grander.

On June 10, GOOD Meat broke ground on what will eventually be the largest cultivated meat production center in Asia. Scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2023, the center will have the capacity to produce tens of thousands of pounds of meat – all without killing a single animal.

“It’s been really nice to see the progress between the first dinner and suddenly there’s this whole factory opening up a year or two later,” Kiah said. “It’s changing fast.”

The groundbreaking was, undoubtedly, an historic moment for the cultivated meat industry as it increases production to feed the masses. Indeed, the event was so notable that Singapore’s Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu attended the event and made remarks.

But along with luminaries like Fu, here was Kiah, still a child, remarking at how the world was changing around her.

“We’re the future generation, and we should be the ones who are gonna change things,” she said.

Even for Kiah, who had been a part of the very first dinner serving cultivated meat, this was all a little shocking. Things were moving so quickly, she said. There were many more people here. There was a lot more buzz this time.

“It wasn’t as small as the first dinner; it didn’t feel as private,” she said of the groundbreaking event. “It was nice to see more people know about cultivated meat. It was nice to see what GOOD Meat has become and how influential it has become.”

Ever the optimist, finding the good in the world, Kiah said this can’t be the end, though. For her, this can only be the beginning of a larger dinner table revolution.

“My hope for this is to get it out to everyone. I want cultivated meat in supermarkets. I want it in the shelves next to regular meat to buy it and take it home and cook it for myself,” she said. “What’s the point of doing this if we’re not going to get to it to everyone? This factory means we’re getting there. Now it’s actually a possibility.”