Highlighting food shortage: Members of the Extinction Rebellion’s Four Horse-Men of the Climate Apocalypse staging a protest on famine in Cape Town, South Africa, to mark the last official day of COP27. — AP

Representatives from nine countries sat down to dinner. It was the start of the second week of COP27, but this was no panel discussion or debate over loss and damage. The dinner, hosted by the government of Singapore alongside alternativeprotein advocates, was instead a celebration of the main dish: cultivated chicken, or meat grown from animal cells in a bioreactor.

At the moment, Singapore is the only place in the world that permits the commercial sale of cultivated protein, also known as lab-grown meat, cultured meat or cell-based meat. But chicken isn’t its only focus.

As climate change threatens global marine ecosystems, the city-state is also leading a charge to allow, regulate, and ultimately normalise the commercial sale of cultivated seafood.

Singapore’s enthusiasm, driven by the local diet and its own reliance on food imports, is matched by that of dozens of startups around the world, all of which are exploring ways to grow cell-based oysters, lobsters, and other marine species in laboratory settings – and figuring out how to get consumers interested in eating them.

The science behind cell-based meat isn’t new – cell cultures were first used in medical research in 1907 – but it has yet to see much application for fish.

Seafood is, however, a ripe space for innovation. Humans eat more than twice as much of it today as they did in 1960: Fish consumption has been rising at almost double the rate of population growth. And seafood transportation often requires long-haul airlifting, resulting in copious greenhouse-gas emissions.

The fishing industry is also among the most vulnerable to a changing climate, as ocean acidification compromises marine habitats and warmer seawater shifts the distribution pattern of fish stocks.

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Less than two thirds of those stocks are now within biologically sustainable levels, down from 90% in 1974, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

The decline in wild catches cannot be easily offset by aquaculture either, which has itself fallen victim to climate change-driven extreme weather. In July, a tropical cyclone in southern China wreaked havoc on fish farms equal in size to 22,900 football fields.

Mirte Gosker, managing director of Singapore-based nonprofit Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, says threats to the seafood supply present an obvious moment for cultivated protein.

“It’s simply a smarter way to make meat,” she says. “Asian markets play a central role in this shift. Of the top 10 countries that eat the most fish, seven of them are in Asia, creating an ocean of opportunity for alternative seafood producers.”

At Avant’s windowless lab in Hong Kong Science Park, five scientists execute daily duties that include feeding fish cells with a culture medium containing more than 50 nutrients, counting the number of fish cells grown on different “scaffoldings” to identify the best holding structure, and cooking and sampling cell-based products in the lab’s built-in kitchen.

Seafood culture is so prevalent in Hong Kong that locals named a street after it – Hoi Mei, which means “the flavour of the sea” in Cantonese – and Avant is working on a cellcultured version of a premium ingredient in Asian cuisine.

Cracking the science on cultivated seafood, however, is only half the battle.

Singapore has pledged to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030 (versus less than 10% now), which makes cell-based meat an appealing option. But no other country allows the commercial sale of cultivated protein yet, although some are getting closer.

For now, though, the limited market for these products means startups making them don’t have any path to economies of scale. The emissions toll of mass cultivated fish also remains unclear, as the more bioreactors are deployed to grow fish from cells, the more electricity they consume.

Avant, for its part, is optimistic about these hurdles – even though its own fish fillets won’t be cost-competitive for at least three years. The company is now planning its first factory, and has raised nearly US$15mil (RM4.55mil) from institutional investors. — Bloomberg