SINGAPORE: A Scoot plane heading from South Korea to Singapore was found to be missing a left nose wheel after it landed in Taipei during a scheduled stop on Monday (Jun 19) morning. Scoot said that flight TR897 detected a technical fault upon landing at Taoyuan International Airport. “The flight which was originallyContinue Reading
AHMEDABAD: Authorities in India’s western state of Gujarat evacuated more than 75,000 people from vulnerable coastal communities as cyclone Biparjoy was expected to whirl in from the Arabian Sea to make landfall by Thursday (Jun 15) evening. Early on Thursday, the cyclone was centred 180km off Jakhau port in GujaratContinue Reading
MANDVI, India: More than 100,000 people have been evacuated from the path of a fierce cyclone heading towards India and Pakistan, with forecasters warning on Wednesday (Jun 14) it could devastate homes and tear down power lines. Biparjoy, meaning “disaster” in Bengali, is making its way across the Arabian SeaContinue Reading
On their own, the Covid pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the climate crisis would have each disrupted global supply chains, leading to shortages of critical goods. As it turned out, however, each magnified the impact of the others, creating havoc.
In attempting to deal with these crises, governments learned just how little they knew about global supply chains.
The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework initiated by US President Joe Biden took a giant first step toward finding ways to mitigate future global supply shocks with the Substantial Conclusion of IPEF Supply Chain Agreement Negotiations in Detroit in May.
As the first-ever multiparty framework dedicated to supply chains, including with direct business and labor participation, the 14 members of IPEF have a framework in place to make supply chains more resilient while better respecting and protecting worker rights.
Now, the members must flesh out the framework with details to allow the IPEF initiative to give countries and companies the comfort they need to have faith in regional supply chains, and to protect their respective citizens from future harm.
With governments’ lack of understanding of supply chains and no inter-governmental network to address disruptions, supply chains were bound to falter as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
The term “supply chain” itself underscores why governments were unequipped to deal with the crisis.
As retired Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan puts it, “The very metaphor of a ‘chain’ understates the complexity, because a chain is an essentially simple linear structure. A more appropriate metaphor is the root system of a tree leading to its trunk, leading to branches, twigs, and leaves. The global system comprises a thick forest of trees intertwined with each other across continents.”
When Covid hit, each government focused on its own supply chain and did not take into account the root system. As a result, all hell broke loose.
For example, the grounding of passenger aircraft at the country level led to a severe reduction of air-cargo capacity. As a result, critical health-care goods competed with escalating online demand for consumer goods for the limited capacity across the globe.
Even as governments recognized the need for business continuity for essential goods, they forgot the critical role of air and maritime crew to support the movement of these goods, creating some of the toughest conditions for operators, and exacerbating the shock.
As a result, the logistics industry struggled with staffing issues. A talent challenge that had already existed pre-pandemic became a crisis.
During the pandemic, governments created task forces to focus on domestic health outcomes, but did not account for how complex supply chains would contribute to the fight against the spread of the virus.
Lockdowns and movement-control orders affected the production, distribution, import and export of parts, components, and finished goods. Constantly changing measures including testing and quarantines strained capacity, added costs, and challenged planning, forecasting, and production timelines.
National pandemic responses including stockpiling and nearshoring did not account for long and complex supply chains, raising costs of business at home while decimating suppliers and partners overseas.
The IPEF Supply Chain Agreement takes up these lessons learned by contemplating the establishment of bodies to facilitate cooperation. These include the following.
The IPEF Supply Chain Council is to establish a mechanism for the partners to work collaboratively to develop sector-specific action plans for critical sectors and key goods to enhance the resilience of IPEF partners’ supply chains, including through diversification of sources, infrastructure and workforce development, enhanced logistics connectivity, business matching, joint research and development, and trade facilitation.
Similarly, the IPEF Supply Chain Crisis Response Network would establish an emergency communications channel for the partners to seek support during a supply-chain disruption and to facilitate information sharing and collaboration among them during a crisis, enabling a faster and more effective response that minimizes negative effects.
Recognizing this significant first step, Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yon said, “Singapore joins other IPEF partners in welcoming an innovative Supply Chain Agreement that will enhance our individual and collective efforts to strengthen the resilience and connectivity of our supply chains. This will also put us in a stronger place to anticipate and respond to any future disruptions to these supply chains.”
IPEF incorporates the Biden administration’s “worker-centric” trade policy by establishing a Labor Rights Advisory Board consisting of government, worker, and employer representatives to support the promotion of labor rights in their supply chains, promotion of sustainable trade and investment, and facilitation of opportunities for investment in businesses that respect labor rights.
Singapore’s tripartite structure consisting of unions, employers, and the government works successfully in addressing wage, productivity, and talent issues. However, whether a tripartite model across the 14 IPEF countries can be as successful remains an open question.
What standards apply when it comes to determining if a worker’s rights are being respected? What will be the enforcement mechanism if there is an allegation of unfair labor practices at a specific facility? Will it be up to each IPEF member to address the allegation of worker abuse in a manner consistent with its domestic laws and regulations? How is this feasible when IPEF will not be a binding legal agreement (at least to start)?
Persuading certain IPEF members to adopt and implement tougher labor standards, especially without the promise of increased US market access, will be a challenge and will take time.
As IPEF’s Supply Chain Pillar has only been “substantially concluded,” each of the 14 parties now engages in domestic consultations and legal review.
The multiple global crises are on no such timetable. The climate crisis is worsening. There is no end in sight to the war in Ukraine. The US, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Australia continue “de-risking” from China, as China itself implements its own dual circulation strategy, each of which have supply-chain consequences. The next pandemic could strike tomorrow.
In the meantime, Donald Trump leads in the polls to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States again. The US will pull out of multiparty frameworks such as IPEF if he wins.
The Supply Chain and Crisis Response Networks, where governments work with one another and with business and labor, recognizing that supply chains are no longer chains, needs to be established soonest, given there are so many crises on the horizon.
Security agencies looking into reports that activists are promoting independence referendum
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Tuesday urged security agencies to speed up investigating a group of activists calling for a referendum on establishing an independent Muslim “Patani State” in the South.
Emerging from the weekly cabinet meeting, Gen Prayut said the government’s legal team and security agencies were investigating, and the authorities were checking media reports about a politician pulling strings.
However, he insisted the issue would be dealt with under the law.
“The most important thing is that we agree the gravity of the unrest in the far South should not go back to being as intense as before,” he told reporters.
“We intend to maintain peace in the region much as we can through the peace process.”
The prime minister added, however, that there could be disruption to peace efforts during the transition to the new government.
The authorities were spurred into action by the establishment of Pelajar Bangsa (“National Students”), a youth group representing students from the three southernmost provinces, during a seminar on the Pattani campus of Prince of Songkla University last week.
It is believed the group is the latest incarnation of the Federation of Patani Students and Youth (PerMas), which was disbanded in November 2021.
The seminar was titled “Self-Determination and Patani Peace”.
Speakers at the seminar included Worawit Baru, deputy leader of the Prachachat Party and MP-elect for Pattani; and Hakim Pongtigor, deputy secretary-general of the Fair Party.
The two parties are part of the prospective coalition led by the Move Forward Party, which is seeking to form the next government.
At the seminar, participants were given a ballot paper on which they were asked to vote for a referendum on an independent “Patani” state — the spelling preferred by those in favour of self-determination.
A picture of the ballot shared on social media prompted a reaction from netizens as well as security agencies.
However, both Prachachat and Fair have denied having anything to do with the ballot. They insisted they never entertained the thought, let alone acted, to support an independent state of Patani.
Move Forward Party leader and prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat has also said he opposes the idea of an independence referendum.
Lt Gen Santi Sakuntanak, the commander of the Fourth Army Region that is responsible for the South, chaired a meeting on Tuesday to follow up on the investigation into the Patani State seminar.
He said the investigation was making headway as it was looking into details of the seminar and who is behind the independent Patani campaign.
He said the investigation gave strong indications that the law was violated at the seminar, adding that he had instructed investigators to gather evidence quickly.
As Russia’s progress in Ukraine has stalled, with enormous losses in material and people, the frustrated head of the Wagner mercenary force Yevgeny Prigozhin has called for Russia to shift to a total war economy:
The Kremlin must declare a new wave of mobilization to call up more fighters and declare martial law and force ‘everyone possible’ into the country’s ammunition production efforts. We must stop building new roads and infrastructure facilities and work only for the war.
His words echo similar sentiments expressed by the head of Russia’s state broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonyan – an influential supporter of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – who said recently:
Our guys are risking their lives and blood every day. We’re sitting here at home. If our industry is not keeping up, let’s all get a grip! Ask anyone. Aren’t we all ready to come help for two hours after work?
Already facing Western sanctions since its annexation of Crimea and occupation of territory in Ukraine’s eastern provinces in 2014, Russia has had to adapt to life under an increasingly harsh series of economic punishments.
And, while Putin had apparently planned for a relatively short “special military operation”, this conflict has become a protracted and expensive war of attrition.
The Economist has estimated Russian military spending at 5 trillion rubles (US$60.5 billion) a year, or 3% of its GDP, a figure the magazine describes as “a puny amount” compared to its spending in the second world war. Other estimates are higher – the German Council on Foreign Relations (GDAP) estimates US$90 billion, or more like 5% of GDP.
But the international sanctions have hit the economy hard. They have affected access to international markets and the ability to access foreign currency and products. And the rate at which the Russian military is getting through equipment and ammunition is putting a strain on the country’s defense industry.
So the Kremlin faces a choice: massively increasing its war efforts to achieve a decisive breakthrough, or continuing its war of attrition. The latter would aim to outlast Ukraine in the hope that international support may waver in the face of a global cost of living crisis.
Russia has lost substantial amounts of arms and ammunition.
In March 2023, UK armed forces minister James Heappey estimated that Russia had lost 1,900 main battle tanks, 3,300 other armored combat vehicles, 73 crewed, fixed-wing aircraft, several hundred uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) of all types, 78 helicopters, 550 tube artillery systems, 190 rocket artillery systems and eight naval vessels.
Russia has to contend with several important military-industrial challenges. For one, its high-technology precision-guided weapons require access to foreign technology.
This is now unavailable – or restricted to sanctions-busting deals which can only supply a fraction of what is needed. Most of the high-tech electronic components used by the Russian military are manufactured by US companies.
So it has to substitute these with lower-grade domestic components, which is probably why the Russian military is using its high-tech weaponry sparingly. But the artillery shells on which it has been relying are running short.
US think tank the Center for Security and International Studies has reported US intelligence estimates that since February 2022, export controls have degraded Russia’s ability to replace more than 6,000 pieces of military equipment.
Sanctions have also forced key defense industrial facilities to halt production and caused shortages of critical components for tanks and aircraft, among other materiel.
There are clear signs of increasing efforts to address the shortages.
According to a report in the Economist, Dmitri Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, has recently announced plans for the production of 1,500 modern tanks in 2023. Russian news agency Tass reported recently Medvedev also plans to oversee a ramping up of mass production of drones.
The government is reported to be providing substantial loans to arms manufacturers and even issuing orders to banks to do the same. Official statistics indicate that the production of “finished metal goods” in January and February was 20% higher compared to the previous year.
The GDAP reported in February: “As of January 2023, several Russian arms plants were working in three shifts, six or seven days a week, and offering competitive salaries. Hence, they can increase production of those weapon systems that Russia is still able to manufacture despite the sanctions.”
So it appears the Kremlin is playing a delicate balancing act of redirecting significant resources to the military and related industries while trying to minimize the disruption of the general economy, which would risk losing the support of large sections of the population.
The International Monetary Fund has projected Russia’s economy to grow by 0.7% this year (which would trump the UK’s projected growth of 0.4%). This will largely be underpinned by export revenues for hydrocarbons as well as arms sales to various client countries happy to ignore Western sanctions.
Meanwhile diversifying import sources has kept stores stocked. However, Russian public opinion pollster Romir has reported that while most people aren’t worried about the absence of sanctioned goods, about half complained that the quality of substituted goods had deteriorated.
So ordinary Russians – those who haven’t lost loved ones on the battlefield or to exile – remain relatively sanguine about everyday life. But a longer, more intense conflict, requiring a shift to a total war economy, could be a different matter altogether.
Christoph Bluth is Professor of International Relations and Security, University of Bradford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
David Woo writes that Market reactions to Ukraine’s anticipated counteroffensive have been muted so far, but the potential for an oil market disruption and gold’s resilience amid geopolitical risks present investment opportunities, while a long Turkish lira position emerges as a low-correlation trade option.
Uwe Parpart sees Ukrainian military probes in the country’s south as having yielded little strategic advantage, while the Russians have position themselves favorably, potentially setting the stage for a wider war and highlighting the risks of Ukraine resorting to actions that may draw NATO into the fight.
James Davis analyzes Ukraine’s latest offensive to liberate territories occupied by Russia. Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses, with their armor destroyed by Russian helicopters, revealing weaknesses in Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense and the need for air cover in future offensives.
Scott Foster explains how the RISC-V Software Ecosystem’s (RISE) aims of supporting the open standard RISC-V International and strengthening the development of RISC-V poses challenges to the US government’s efforts to hinder Chinese high-tech advancements.
Scott Foster writes that despite the Japanese government’s plans to impose export restrictions on semiconductor production equipment to China, Japanese equipment makers, such as Screen Holdings, do not anticipate significant damage to their business due to a shift in Chinese investment focus.
The launch of a new RISC-V software association makes open-standard integrated circuit design and open-source software even more of a challenge for the US government’s efforts to stop the development of Chinese high-tech and bend Europe to its geopolitical will.
On May 31, Linux Foundation Europe announced the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE), which it described as,
a new collaborative effort that brings together global industry leaders committed to accelerating the availability of software for high-performance and power-efficient RISC-V cores [processing units] running high-level operating systems for a variety of market segments.
Those market segments include cloud computing, data centers, automobiles, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. Hosted by Linux Foundation Europe, RISE supports the global open standard activities of RISC-V International.
Gabriele Columbro, General Manager of Linux Foundation Europe, notes that,
The RISE Project is dedicated to enabling RISC-V in open-source tools and libraries (LLVM and GCC, etc) to speed implementation and time to market. RISC-V is a cornerstone of the European technology and industrial landscape so we’re honored to provide a neutral, trusted home for the RISE Project under Linux Foundation Europe.
Thirteen companies from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China form the RISE Governing Board: NVIDIA, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, Samsung, Google, Andes, Red Hat, Imagination Technologies, Rivos, SiFive, Ventana and T-Head.
It’s significant that T-Head is included. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba, a fabless semiconductor design company that develops application-specific ICs for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, industrial, financial, consumer electronics and other applications. In effect, it is the Alibaba group’s semiconductor division.
According to T-Head Vice President Jianyi Meng,
T-Head has been contributing to the software ecosystem through initiatives such as putting various operating systems onto RISC-V and contributing an integrated development environment to the RISC-V community. Together with other global business leaders for the RISE Project and our partners across sectors, we can further drive the growth of the open-source software ecosystem.
Speaking at a conference in Shanghai at the beginning of March, Meng said,
The development of RISC-V requires global innovation collaboration, from chips to software, applications and terminals. T-Head is pulling together the major ecosystems so that global developers and partners can better use and develop RISC-V technologies.
At that time, T-Head and Alipay also announced plans to enable secure payments on wearable devices using embedded RISC-V processors.
The rise of RISC-V, particularly in China, is likely to be negative for Arm and its Japanese owner Softbank, which plans to take Arm public later this year. Proprietary instruction-set architectures from Arm are seen as high-risk by the Chinese due to potential US influence on their owner.
RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture based on reduced instruction set computer design principles. It was conceived at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010.
The RISC-V Foundation was established in Delaware in 2015 to support and manage open-source technology, with the Institute of Computing Technologies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as one of the founders.
Other founding members include Google, Qualcomm, Western Digital, Hitachi and Samsung. Other Chinese members include Huawei, ZTE, Tencent and Alibaba Cloud. Altogether, the association has more than 300 corporate, academic and other institutional members around the world
In 2020, the Foundation was incorporated in Switzerland as the RISC-V International Association, moving out of the United States to avoid potential disruption caused by then-president Donald Trump’s anti-China trade policy. For more information about this, see Open-source IC architecture taking off in China.
The GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) mentioned by Gabriele Columbro is part of the GNU Project, a collaborative effort for the development of free software founded in 1978 by Richard Stallman at MIT.
Linux, the open software kernel created by the Swedish-Finnish software engineer Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s, is normally used with the GNU operating system.
GCC consists of free software programs from the GNU Project and other parties, created in an open environment in order to “attract a larger team of developers, to ensure that GCC and the GNU system work on multiple architectures and diverse environments.” GCC is one of the world’s largest free software programs.
GNU defines itself as “an operating system that is free software – that is, it respects users’ freedom.” Its “four essential freedoms” are,
Freedom to distribute “means you are free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere.”
The explanation goes on to note that:
Sometimes government export control regulations and trade sanctions can constrain your freedom to distribute copies of programs internationally. Software developers do not have the power to eliminate or override these restrictions, but what they can and must do is refuse to impose them as conditions of use of the program. In this way, the restrictions will not affect activities and people outside the jurisdictions of these governments. Thus, free software licenses must not require obedience to any nontrivial export regulations as a condition of exercising any of the essential freedoms.
According to the Linux Foundation, open-source technologies that are published and made publicly available are not subject to the Export Administration Regulations of the Bureau of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce.
China has involved itself in RISC-V from the beginning and that – particularly in view of the Biden administration’s liberal and expanding use of sanctions – has turned out to be a very good idea.
Follow this writer on Twitter: @ScottFo83517667
Beijing’s political and military ambitions in the Middle East have been the focus of intense speculation ever since China brokered the a & nbsp, Saudi-Iran peace deal, in March.
Although the majority of observers concur that China’s regional strategic objectives go beyond conventional energy trades, there is debate over whether it should send troops to work its power in the Middle East in order to remove the United States.
Those two inquiries are naturally related and moral. Beijing’s capacity to influence home and intra-regional dynamics is expanding as China becomes more involved in local socioeconomic, political, and diplomatic affairs.
Strategiticians can’t help but wonder what this means for America’s position in the region and the security structures its existence has enabled in light of the great-power competition between the US and China.
In the oil-rich place, China obviously has national security interests to safeguard. More than & nbsp, or 53 % of Beijing’s crude oil imports, comes from the Middle East, a source of hydrocarbons that Beijing cannot risk losing. It makes sense to believe that China would want to have troops in the area given this dependence and the danger it presents in case of a military issue. & nbsp,
reasonable, but is the presumption accurate? Perhaps no.
Production and transportation are the two factors that have an impact on Beijing’s power supply. The biggest dangers to the past are inter-state conflicts or local unrest. The difficulties in protecting strength transportation are more varied and include, in the worst-case scenario, a naval blockade, local instability, disruption to sea-lane communications, and piracy.
The risk of disturbance to production and transportation will continue to exist as long as China’s reliance on Middle Eastern energy resources is great.
The leaders of China, however, are pragmatic and make a distinction between risk and vulnerability. Beijing believes it is vulnerable but not necessarily resilient despite its significant reliance on Middle Eastern strength. This is due to the fact that both China and the Middle East depend on one another for their crude. There is a shared dislike of upheaval.
Moreover, China wouldn’t be the only survivor in the event of a regional problems that interfered with production or transportation. Oil-importing nations from Asia to Europe may be impacted, a circumstance that neither China nor the US wants. In addition, & nbsp,
Taiwan is currently the biggest possible battlefield between the US and China. Washington could use its government to obstruct or suffocate China’s energy transport lanes in the event of hostilities it in an effort to control Chinese operations in Taiwan Strait. China will likely need to fortify its strength transports from the Middle East in order to prepare for that situation.
However, the Chinese see this exposure from two very distinct angles. A US naval blockade on energy imports would worry China less than the prospect of a full-scale conflict with its power rival, on the one hand. Global power market upheaval would be important, but it is unlikely to be the deciding factor in any US-China conflict.
However, despite Beijing’s concerns about a possible US blockade of Middle Eastern energy imports, the cost-benefit analysis does not support the presence of Chinese troops there. Beijing would need to deploy at least a near-peer military in order for China to build efficient and ample capabilities to combat the US. Anything less would not solve China’s flaws in any case.
The US’s regional military budget currently exceeds$ 70 billion. China will have a$ 224 billion defense budget in 2023. Beijing would need to spend at least one-third of China’s overall defense budget if it were to match the level of military spending Washington is currently making in the area.
Given that the West Pacific, which receives the majority of China’s military interest, is its main theater and most serious geopolitical threat, this is obviously not cost-effective.
As a result, China has created alternative, less expensive strategies to reduce its challenges to energy security. Beijing has worked to mediate harmony agreements between long-standing rivals in order to put an end to regional wars.
It is integrating and entwining itself with the local players’ future economic architecture. Additionally, it is attempting to foster interconnectedness between China’s 1.4 billion people and energy-producing nations.
These resources, when combined, might be far more efficient than military equipment ever was. & nbsp,
Regarding China’s expanding appearance in the Middle East, whatever form it takes, National strategists have conflicting opinions. Many experienced American diplomats are also slowly excited to see China be enmeshed in a location that is plagued by conflicting conflicts, even though Washington is convinced that Beijing wants to replace the US as the country’s security guarantor.
However, regardless of whether the US finds it interesting or appropriate, China will still participate in the area in its own method. The country’s social, economic, and political existence will be a force to be reckoned with even if Chinese troops always deploy in large numbers to the Middle East.
The Syndication Bureau, which holds rights, provided this content.
At the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, Yun Sun serves as the director of the & nbsp, China & NbSp program and a co-director for the AndnBsP, East & NBP, Asia program.
In an unassuming butcher’s shop on Singapore’s Ann Siang Hill, juicy steaks hang from hooks in the windows. Local favourites – chicken satay skewers and beef rendang – sit in cool glass booths.
But the meatiness is an illusion, the satays are soy-based and the steaks pumped up with shiitake mushroom. But, Love Handle, Asia’s first plant-based butcher, is not targeting Singapore’s vegans, or the vegetarian diets of the country’s Buddhist and Hindu communities. About 70% of its customers are meat eaters and its mission is to reach the mainstream.
“Our target audience is specifically not vegans,” said Ken Kuguru, Love Handle’s CEO and founder. “It’s a bit of a paradox. [But in everything] we are a little bit paradoxical.”
As a city-state that imports more than 90% of its food and has little room for actual livestock, Singapore has a vested supply chain interest in shifting from traditional meats.
Last year, a three-month chicken export ban from Malaysia, which provides the Lion City with about 34% of its poultry, halted the normal inflow of approximately 1.8 million broiler chickens a month. The ban caused a hike in poultry prices and concern over the country’s food security.
At the same time, environmental sustainability concerns are pushing many in Singapore and beyond to rethink their diets to reduce consumption of animal products. Restaurants and suppliers are increasingly following a similar path as Love Handle in using plant-based foods to reach customers beyond just vegans and vegetarians. Though challenges remain in making a convincing meat substitute, a rising class of Singaporean food entrepreneurs are betting on new techniques to recreate favourite dishes in a more eco-friendly way.
For some of them, this isn’t just a business decision – it’s a way to possibly prevent the worst outcomes of global climate change while preparing for a new world brought on by environmental crises.
In the Lion City, about 7% of the population are vegan or vegetarian, according to a 2020 poll by research firm YouGov Singapore. Individual reasons for the diet typically include environmental and health concerns, which together accounted for 70% of the reasons to give up meat.But it is unlikely that change will be driven by the small minorities who are willing to fully embrace a plant-based diet.
“There’s a lot of dishes that already cater to this community,” said Kuguru. “It’s established, it’s traditional, it’s there – but it hasn’t grown.”
To penetrate beyond this small and set demographic, he believes it’s important to emulate the “meaty” flavours that might hold people back from moving away from animal proteins.
Love Handle’s products replicate the umami tones of meat by catalysing the natural chemical interactions released from vegetables through the cooking process. Some plant-based companies replicate meat’s bloody qualities through leghemoglobin, a red protein found in soybeans.
These kinds of efforts are already showing promise in the marketplace as consumers around the world gain a taste for the meat-free lifestyle. According to Bloomberg Intelligence data, the global market for plant-based foods could see fivefold growth by 2030.
On the other hand, the quantity of meat produced over the past 50 years has increased threefold and remains on an upward trajectory, according to an October report on sustainable food by accounting giant PwC’s strategy consulting business.
Another report by the Stockholm Environment Institute a month later stated animal-based foods could be responsible for at least 16.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions. The report warned that if current consumption trends continue, it will be impossible to keep global warming below the 1.5° Celsius mark and increasingly challenging to stay below the 2° Celsius upper limit.
Vegan alternatives of popular local food … appeal[s] to the masses, draws them in to give vegan food a try”
LK Ong, Chef, VeganBliss
The high environmental stakes have provided extra motivation to those hunting the elusive secrets of re-creating meatiness.
For VeganBliss restaurant, which opened last year amongst the bright Peranakan shophouses of Joo Chiat Road, the key to selling a wider market on sustainable eating has been emulating not just the meat, but also the meal. The restaurant’s “roast chicken rice” bestseller is made from natural gluten but resembles the sliced fillets found at most of the country’s popular hawker food markets.
“Making vegan alternatives of popular local food … appeal[s] to the masses, draws them in to give vegan food a try, [and shows them] that the switch to veganism doesn’t entail sacrificing your favourite food,” says LK Ong, chef at VeganBliss.
For other restaurants, branching out from familiarity of local favourites has raised a challenge.
“In Asia, we eat based on tradition. You eat what you do because that’s what your mum did and grandmother did,” said Christina Rasumussen, a chef and entrepreneur. “But this doesn’t work for our planet anymore … we have to change.”
After working at Michelin-starred restaurant Noma and a plant-based collective in her native Denmark, Rasmussen moved to Singapore in 2022. When launching Mallow, her first pop-up concept in the city-state, she grappled with the challenge of how to integrate a vegan business into a culinary culture that celebrates local dishes such as poached Hainanese chicken rice and seafood laksa soup noodles and where traditional hawker food markets have gained UNESCO heritage status.
“Overall, vegan concepts are not popular like you may find in other western cities,” she said.
Most of Mallow’s customers were not vegan. As she prepares to launch her first permanent restaurant, Fura, she has consciously moved away from “plant-based” or “plant-forward” labels, to instead focus on “what our diet could look like in the future, due to climate change”. The menu will use ingredients that are in abundant supply, including insect proteins.
“We don’t openly brand ourselves as being vegan on purpose as it turns many away, instead we say plant-focused,” Rasmussen said. “[We’re] slowly changing people’s perceptions of what being conscious can look and taste like.”
As a small island metropolis, making sustainable diets the norm in Singapore will rely on sustainable supply chains.
Last year’s upheaval of chicken imports brought this fact into stark relief.
“We intend to grow more food locally to serve as a buffer in times of supply disruption,” said Grace Fu, minister for sustainability and the environment, in a parliamentary response to the chicken situation.
Fu and others in government used the issue to promote Singapore’s “30 by 30” campaign, an ongoing effort that aims to boost domestic food production to about 30% of everything consumed in the city-state by the end of the decade.
Restaurants including Love Handle and Fura focus on native ingredients such as soybeans, jackfruit and mushrooms. But the market still faces serious challenges in cost accessibility. Currently, Love Handle’s prices parallel those of high-end meat butchers in the city.
“Green Rebel” beef steak, made from mushrooms and seasoned with Cajun spices, costs $5.91 (SGD 8) for a 180 gram portion, while a 100 gram packet of vegetable “sausage” mince is priced at $5.17 (SGD 7).
In comparison, $10.16 (SGD 13.75) can buy 500 grams of Australian grass-fed beef mince and a 250 gram New Zealand striploin beef steak costs $8.49 (SGD 11.50) at local supermarket FairPrice. At local wet markets, prices can be even cheaper.
“In order to bring plant-based meats closer to the [meat-eating] consumer, the company will often add in additives, flavourings, colours, textures – when you add in all these new ingredients, you add to the cost, you add to the energy consumed in the process,” said Willam Chen, a professor in food science and technology at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
“Subsequent processing of plant-based protein foods to suit consumers’ demand also needs energy. There is no holy grail.”
To address this issue, some innovation hubs are developing alternative proteins grown from animal cells in labs. Last year, Singapore became the first country in the world to grant regulatory approval for the sale of lab-cultured meat.
It’s a sector of innovation that fascinates Kuguru. For Love Handle’s next venture, he is partnering with a research lab to fuse animal and plant cells to create alternative proteins at a larger scale.
While not involving the slaughter of live animals, these new hybrid meats would not be considered vegan. But Kuguru is confident this move will not shut most vegans out.
“Anecdotally, the vast majority of vegans and vegetarians opted to move to a vegan and vegetarian diet because of either environmental reasons or animal cruelty reasons,” he said. “For those groups, moving to hybrid meat products would solve their core issues and allow them to reintroduce sustainable and ethical meat products back into their diets.”
As companies vye to keep up with consumer tastes, the wider industry has a more pressing issue on its plate. For Kuguru, switching to greener alternatives from traditionally farmed, animal meats may quite literally be a way to save the earth.
“Given the data on the beef industry, the carbon emissions, the amount of land that’s available, the math doesn’t work,” he said. “The planet is going to implode.”