SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Chicken will be on the menu now at a Singapore restaurant. That may not sound unusual, expect this chicken was grown in a lab. San Francisco based Eat Just recently gained approval to for people to eat its cultured chicken bites in Singapore.

Eat Just develops and markets plant-based alternatives to conventionally-produced egg products. The company’s lab-grown chicken has been six years in the research and development. The cultured meat is created in a bioreactor, an apparatus in which a biological reaction or change takes place. According to Eat Just’s co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick, the cultured version tastes the same as (you guessed it) conventional chicken.

“I think the approval is one of the most significant milestones in the food industry in the last handful of decades,” Tetrick said. “It’s an open door and it’s up to us and other companies to take that opportunity. My hope is this leads to a world in the next handfuls of years where the majority of meat doesn’t require a single animal or tearing down a single tree. “We’ve been eating meat for many hundreds, thousands of years, always needing to kill an animal to eat – until now.”

Once known primarily for its plant-based egg alternatives (such as vegan mayonnaise and a mung bean-based folded scramble), the company has branched out with its cultured meat products. In addition to its lab-grown chicken line, it’s also developing cultured Wagyu beef.

“Following the Singapore Food Agency’s safety review, Eat Just’s cultured chicken is confirmed to be safe and nutritious for human consumption by a panel of international scientists specializing in medicine, toxicology, cell biology and food safety,” Tetrick said.

The idea of lab-cultured meat is catching on. Competitors in the cultured meat space include the Netherlands’ Mosa Meat, Israel’s Aleph Farms and California’s Memphis Meats.

Memphis Meats dished up deep-fried samples of its lab-produced poultry earlier this month in San Francisco, and those who sampled it said that while it seemed spongier than a whole chicken breast, it basically tasted like the real thing.

Eat Just touts its product as “safe, healthy and more sustainable.” No animals are killed in the process, Instead, small amounts of an animal’s cells are harvested and fed amino acids, carbohydrates, minerals, fats and vitamins.

“The entire process takes place in a safe and controlled environment, much like a beer brewery,” Eat Just explains on its website.

The company said it performed 20 production runs at its 1,200-liter bioreactors to demonstrate its safety to food regulators. Those tests show the product met the same safety standards as traditional poultry meat and had “extremely low and significantly cleaner microbiological content then conventional chicken,” Tetrick said.

The meat, which will be sold as nuggets, will be priced at premium chicken prices when it first launches in restaurants in Singapore. Chicken, rather than other meats, are the first focus of Eat Just because of its growing global demand, the company said.

“Singapore has long been a leader in innovation of all kinds, from information technology to biologics to now leading the world in building a healthier, safer food system,” Tetrick said. “I’m sure that our regulatory approval for cultured meat will be the first of many in Singapore and in countries around the globe. Companies like ours can help meet the increased demand for animal protein as our population climbs to 9.7 billion by 2050.”

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, global consumption of poultry meats, which includes chicken, has increased fivefold since the 1960s. In 2021, global production of chicken meat is forecast to grow by two percent to a record 102.9 million tons, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Americans spend roughly $90 billion per year just on chicken. But don’t expect to see high-tech chicken tenders hit your grocery store soon. The company estimates it costs under $9,000 to make one pound of the meat. Memphis Meats expects prices to come down in the next several years.

The U.S. Poultry & Egg Association as well as the United Egg Producers declined comment on the idea of lab-grown meat.