Narrator: This piece of fried chicken was grown in a lab,
and it is the only kitchen in the world allowed to serve it.
It is cooked like any normal piece of chicken,
except no animals were killed in the process.
Instead, it was made from stem cells taken
from a live chicken and cultured in a lab.
The biggest reaction we get is people just say,
"This tastes like chicken."
And there's a surprise in the normalcy of it.
Narrator: Considering the growing challenge of feeding meat
to the 9 billion people on this planet,
this could be a food revolution that cannot develop
fast enough to take over traditional livestock farming.
We talked to American company Good Meat
to find out how this chicken goes from lab to table.
At 1880 restaurant, the kitchen staff are busy
prepping, and lab-grown chicken is their star ingredient.
Cooking with Good Meat is essentially the same
as cooking with regular meat, since it truly is meat.
Narrator: Last November, Singapore became the first country
in the world to approve lab-grown chicken.
Think about how commonly held that assumption is.
In order to eat fried chicken,
in order to have a rib-eye steak,
in order to have a hamburger -- real meat --
we necessarily have to kill the cow
or the pig or the chicken.
Doesn't have to be the case.
Narrator: Ten years ago, Josh cofounded what has
become the most popular plant-based egg brand, Just Egg.
When that worked, he turned his attention to meat.
Scientists start by collecting cells directly
from chickens in a biopsy-like procedure.
So they are what we call progenitor cells.
They can proliferate for a long time,
and they can essentially become every cell type
that you find in meat.
We can make muscle cells.
You can make fat cells, which provide a lot of flavor.
Narrator: The cells grow in a nutrient-rich broth
inside a bioreactor.
Imagine walking into a microbrewery and look all around.
But instead of beer in those steel vessels, there's meat.
Narrator: It takes two to three weeks for the meat to grow
and into a piece that can be cooked.
For now, Good Meat is only selling its chicken
to restaurants like this one.
We do do a breading on the chicken nugget.
It really adds this nice lightness,
a little bit of crispiness.
Narrator: For $23, curious customers can try it out:
an iconic Southern recipe of fried chicken and waffle
and a Chinese-inspired dish with bao bun and hoisin sauce.
But food experts say the jury is still out
on whether lab-grown meat will catch on.
There's a lot of doubt about GM-produced foods.
I have a feeling that lab-grown meat is going to
suffer the same ethical acceptability issues.
Narrator: And that's far from being their only hurdle.
They've been working on gaining regulatory approval
in the US and Europe for over two years now.
We had to generate a lot of data,
you know, to discuss with the regulators, to demonstrate
that we are producing a product that is safe and
of quality that meets the specifications that are
expected for meat products.
Narrator: The other challenge is scale.
The US alone consumes
about 400 million pounds of chicken every week.
Meanwhile, Good Meat is producing just
a few thousand pounds every two weeks.
That's a large gap to fill.
Next on their list, wagyu beef.
They're already working closely with a farm
in Japan and testing it in their laboratories.
About 80 companies
around the world are also trying to create similar products,
like Mosa Meat and Olive Farms,
as Good Meat paves the way for everyone in the industry.
Singapore provided an open door.
We got to walk through it now and do the hard work.
And if we're serious about pushing us to that world
where we can eat meat without killing an animal,
we have a lot of work to do.