The first lab-grown meat for sale could come from this Singapore startup that’s re-creating shrimp

© (Comrade / For The Times)
Singapore-based Shiok Meats has re-created shrimp meat in its lab. The company aims to also produce crab and lobster. (Comrade / For The Times)
In an industrial corner of Singapore, multiplying steadily in bioreactors heated precisely to 82 degrees, real shrimp meat is being grown from samples of the crustacean’s microscopic cells.
Fed a nutrient-rich soup meant to mimic its diet in the wild, a single cell can reproduce over a trillion times into a mound of gray translucent flesh. Think of it as meat growing without all the other parts of the animal, including that chalky black vein.
The venture is being led by Sandhya Sriram and a team of scientists, who are attempting to upend one of the cornerstones of dim sum. Sriram’s company, Shiok Meats, is named after Singaporean slang used to declare something delicious.
Similar work is being done across