Cultured Meat Market in the Gaehwagi Era Rises as Next-Generation Food on the Table

- Jeong Il-du, CEO of Simple Planet, explaining cell-based food ingredients

On the 21st local time, cultured meat, which is meat produced by culturing cells in a laboratory, received sales approval in the United States. Cell culture technology is an advanced technology convergence future agriculture technique that produces food by culturing animal and plant cells instead of cultivating crops or raising livestock, and it is not limited to the livestock industry.

With cultured meat passing the safety review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it is expected to be actively served as the next-generation food. This makes the U.S. the second country in the world to approve the sale of cultured meat, with the first country being Singapore, which in 2020 became the first in the world to allow the sale of cultured chicken meat. This signals that cultured meat is safe for consumption and marks the commercialization of next-generation food.

In South Korea, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety also recognizes cultured cells as food ingredients and is establishing related systems. Recently, Pulmuone signed an investment contract with Simple Planet, a domestic cultured meat company, to commercialize cell-cultured food, and various companies are actively collaborating.

Simple Planet is the only company in South Korea that has secured 13 types of cell lines and possesses the technology to generate diverse cell lines, which is more important than the number of individual cell lines. It is active at the forefront of the cultured meat industry, discussing raw material supply with global companies such as Nestl? and B?hler.

Furthermore, Simple Planet is proving its innovation and business potential worldwide. It was selected as one of the ‘Foodtech 500,’ representing 500 global companies leading digital innovation and technological advancement in the food and beverage industry by Forward Food in the UK, and was chosen as an official partner of GFI Asia Pacific, a non-profit organization researching sustainable future food systems.

Meanwhile, Jeong Il-du, CEO of Simple Planet, who majored in biotechnology at Boston University and completed a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University, has been invited to the Global Cell Agriculture Summit held in Singapore on September 19. He is scheduled to deliver a speech as the representative of Korea’s cell agriculture and cultured meat industry on the topic of ‘Diversification of Food Production Methods for a Sustainable Future.’