Scientist Dr Mohamad Hafizi Abu Bakar poked suspiciously at the shiny light brown substance on the plate.
Under the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights in a meeting room, the slice of – for lack of a better word – meat flopped on his fork.
It was supposed to be unagi, the Japanese word for freshwater eel. But it looked nothing like the unagi served at his favourite sushi restaurant.
First, he sniffed it. It smelt fishy. Good, he thought. Then he eyed the texture of the “unagi”.
It did not look like unagi exactly, he later told Bernama, it looked more like “plastic made to look like unagi”.
Still, curiosity won. He popped it in his mouth, his mind fleetingly wondering if his bowels would have an emergency appointment with the toilet later.
His tongue told him everything was fine.
“The taste is exactly the same. It’s actually exactly the same as unagi. You actually cannot differentiate,” Mohamad Hafizi laughingly said. “My wife and I go to (Japanese restaurant) Sushi King all the time. So we know the taste.”
The positive taste test is a relief for Mohamad Hafizi, a senior lecturer in bioprocess technology at the School of Industrial Technology at Universiti Sains Malaysia, as well as Jason Ng, vice president and founder of Penang-based Cell AgriTech Sdn Bhd, who gave him the “unagi”.
The fuss over that slice of unagi is because it did not come from a river or a fish tank. Instead, scientists grew it from stem cells – taken from an eel – under carefully controlled conditions in a bioreactor in a laboratory at Cell AgriTech, the first Malaysian company to grow lab meat.
Taste is one of the early hurdles they need to overcome before they can fully introduce the cultured unagi and others of its ilk to Malaysia, which is desperate to find new ways to feed its people as it faces soaring food imports, climate disruption and overfishing.
Acceptance of cultivated meat technology or lab-grown meats could be a game-changer for Malaysia, which has a self-sufficiency food score of 69.9, trailing behind Singapore which scored 73.1, according to the 2022 Global Food Security Index by trade publication ‘The Economist’.
GROWING FOOD CRISIS
Malaysia is highly dependent on food imports to meet local demand as imports outpace exports. In 2023, Malaysia imported about RM78.79 billion worth of food products, including beef, wheat flour, dairy products and vegetables, up from RM75.62 billion the year before. The country’s rice self-sufficiency rate in 2023 was 56.2 percent, with rice production going down from 2.28 million tonnes in 2022 to 2.18 million tonnes in 2023.
Global disruptions – from COVID-19 lockdowns to the war in Ukraine – exposed how easily food supply chains can collapse.
While Malaysia imports less than 10 percent of fish and seafood products, according to government data, fish protein is the most important source of protein for Malaysians.
Malaysia is one of the top consumers of fish and seafood, most of them from marine and brackish sources rather than freshwater, said Associate Prof Amy Then Yee Hui from the Institute of Biological Sciences at Universiti Malaya (UM).
She told Bernama that aquaculture or fish farms are trying to ease the burden of marine fishing, but that has its own sets of problems. Problems include the high cost of production, shortage of land, and environmental damage to rivers and mangroves.
“We have already, kind of, (had) almost 30 years of overfishing happening, right? So, you know, we basically cannot increase (the amount of fish caught in the wild) already, but we're still eating more and more seafood,” she said.
Climate change is also another issue that aquaculture operators face. Fisheries Research Institute (in the Department of Fisheries Malaysia) senior director Dr Azhar Hamzah said the extreme temperature fluctuations have caused many fish in farms to get diseases, which require expensive medications and treatments.
“Heat stress weakens the immune system. The high temperatures will affect the water quality,” he said via Google Meet.
Extreme flooding and thunderstorms have also caused damage to fish farms, allowing the fish stock to escape into the wild, which can cause havoc in the local ecosystem.
CULTURED MEAT AS A SOLUTION
Enter cultured meat: real animal protein, grown without the need for traditional livestock farming or fishing. But is it really a solution?
Singapore seems to think so. It is the first country in Southeast Asia to approve the sale of cultivated meat in 2020. Malaysia is likely not far behind, with the first research and development (R&D) lab for cultivated meat production having opened in Penang in 2023.
Cultured meat production uses DNA technology and starts by extracting a small number of cells from an animal, either alive or freshly slaughtered to meet kosher or halal standards, and placing them in a bioreactor.
The stem cells are fed nutrients and oxygen, which will produce muscle or fat cells, without any blood or bone to mess with. When it is done, it looks like “minced meat”, Ng from Cell AgriTech told Bernama. “We’ve taken the cell from the animal and grown it in a bioreactor. So that's why we can say that the cell in the meat that we grow actually has the same DNA as conventional meat.”
Just in case, part of the quality control will have researchers checking on its genomic sequence to make sure no mutation has occurred or contaminants introduced during the growth process.
Ng said the company is concentrating on fish for now to circumvent the halal certification requirement, which is only for land animals, adding that they are waiting for the government to make the necessary amendments to current legislation to allow the sale of cultivated meat. The government is currently in the midst of conducting a six-month feasibility study, of which Mohamad Hafizi is a part.
Cultured meat can also alleviate safety concerns attached to farmed fish, or even wild fish at times.
Cultivated fish – like the unagi Mohamad Hafizi ate – offers an alternative. It requires no hormones and no antibiotics, and there is no risk of pathogens like worms, or microplastics, found in many fish caught in the wild. As for the environmental factor, it eliminates the risk of introducing invasive species or creating abandoned aquaculture ponds.
UM’s Then was intrigued when she read about cultivated meat, but said it should play a complementary role rather than serve as a replacement for conventional fishing or fish farms.
“I think it is a good alternative so that we’re not so totally dependent on aquaculture,” she said.
PUBLIC PERCEPTION
But the final test, experts say, is acceptance from the public. Knowing consumer psychology and how distrustful Malaysians are when it comes to the marrying of food and technology, the question is: would Malaysians really eat meat grown in a lab?
Bernama conducted an unscientific survey to see whether Malaysians would try cultivated or cultured meat. Many answered they would try it, a few refused outright while most had caveats, saying they would try it if it was certified halal.
The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore has given its green light to cultivated meat as long as the source cells come from a permissible animal slaughtered in the Islamic way and no non-halal materials are used during the cultivation process. Some Islamic scholars elsewhere, including in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, have issued preliminary endorsements of cultured meat’s halal potential, provided strict conditions are met. The Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) is still evaluating the matter.
Many of the ‘no’ answers came from the older generation while millennials were mostly curious. Dr Salini Devi Rajendran from Taylor’s Culinary Institute at Taylor’s University was not surprised, saying the younger generation is usually more environmentally conscious and more scientifically knowledgeable.
She also cautioned that the most important thing is to create awareness among the public and be more transparent so as not to kill the technology before it has a chance to leave the gate.
“Labelling (should be) one of the important or compulsory requirements. And through this labelling, it can actually educate consumers (about) the right information before they buy and consume,” she said, adding it would help traceability, which will then increase consumers’ confidence.
Ng is not too worried about whether the public would accept cultured meat or not as there are many applications for the technology that he is confident the public will not mind. One of them is providing cultured meat as an ingredient for pet food, which is allowed under current regulations. He is also planning to supply hybrid plant-based meat products, which contain a small amount of cultured meat.
“Now one of the reasons why we need this meat, right, because … plant-based (foods), they don't have the taste. Cultivated meat or lab-grown meat, we have the taste because it's the same DNA,” he said.
Ng and Mohamad Hafizi are both excited about the future of cultivated meat in Malaysia, believing Malaysia’s first steps toward lab-grown meat might just be what the country needs in solving its food crisis.
To convince people, Mohamad Hafizi has a plan. He wants people to undergo a blind test when they try cultured meat for the first time.
“Blindfold and have them try to guess which one (is cultured meat). It's like the Pepsi test. Yes, that will be more accurate,” he said, grinning.
