Singaporean company Esco Aster has received the stringent ISO 22000 food safety certification for its cultivated meat manufacturing facility.
The company is the first in the sector to be awarded the certification, following the recent announcement that it had become the first in the world to receive a license to produce cultivated meat for human consumption.
Scaling up
Esco Aster has developed a platform called CellFarm-to-Table™, which will allow it to produce a variety of cultivated meat products. The company is also scaling up its operations, designing three trains of 6,000L bioreactors to bring its total manufacturing volume to 50,000L.
Additionally, Esco Aster is working to lower the cost of cultivated meat production through strategies such as increasing efficiency and reducing the use of serum as a growth medium. The company will manufacture products for both in-house and white label purposes.
Cultivated meat in Singapore
Esco Aster has been granted a license to produce cultivated meat in part due to Singapore’s 30 by 30 strategy, which will involve the country producing 30% of its own food by 2030. This strategy was also instrumental in the groundbreaking regulatory approval of GOOD Meat’s cultivated chicken breast and nuggets in Singapore. Additionally, the Singapore Food Agency is in talks with other local cultivated meat companies such as Shiok Meats regarding the potential approval of their products.
“Esco Aster will be among the first to make white labeling a reality for cultivated meat products with our expertise and familiarity in cell culture, food and sensory science, and production scale-up. Our vertically integrated operations give us a distinct edge in this area,” said Mr. Xiangliang Lin, CEO of Esco Aster and Deputy CEO of Esco Lifesciences Group.
