Cultivated meat company, Vow Group, has taken the next step towards Australian market approval, with Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) declaring the company’s cell-cultured quail meat safe to be used as a novel food ingredient.
Vow first applied to amend the food standards code in February 2023, stating its cultured quail was safe for human consumption. It is the first cell-cultured food produced in Australia and assessed by FSANZ.
FSANZ undertook its first call for submissions on its risk assessment in December 2023. In total, 40 submissions were received, with key issues raised including the sourcing and safety of the cell line, production inputs such as media and growth factors, microbiological safety of the harvested cells and overall food safety requirements.
After confirming there were no toxicological, nutritional safety or food allergenicity concerns, and undertaking a second round of public consultation in November 2024, the approval report has been notified to the Food Ministers’ Meeting. If the recommendation from FSANZ is accepted, the proposed changes to the food code will become part of legislation across Australia and New Zealand – joining Singapore and the US as the only countries with approval to sell cultured meat products.
Vow co-founder and CEO, George Peppou, told Food & Drink Business there’s still a few steps to go, but the company is excited to be in the home stretch of a process that has taken over two years, and resulted in a unique and advanced processing standard for cultured meat for the first time anywhere in the world.
“We've worked really closely with FSANZ over the last two years, sharing thousands of pages of documentation on every detail, from micro and physical chemistry specs to determining the definition of a cell line business,” said Peppou.
Recent success
Vow’s cultured meat products are grown from the cells of the Japanese quail, and the company currently produces three products for sale – parfait, foie gras and tallow.
“On the production side, we’ve been running a completely custom 20,000 litre bioreactor called Andromeda for a few months now, which is what we're producing commercial goods from,” said Peppou.
Source: Forged By Vow
“We have several new products in various phases of testing, including whole products and some B2B ingredients that we’re intending to bring to market over the coming months and years.”
Although Vow hasn’t been able to test its products with the Australian market yet, its Singaporean clientele are big fans. The company started serving its quail products in Singapore under consumer brand, Forged, in April 2024 – becoming the third company in the world to gain approval to sell cultured meat.
“We're finding some really strong product spaces in Singapore. We did a collaboration with Two Men Bagel House in March, selling our foie gras on a bagel, and sold out three times on the day we launched. We had the guys at our distributor doing delivery runs on the weekend because there was so much being sold,” said Peppou.
“We're in more than two dozen restaurants currently, and expect greater expansion over the next eight to ten weeks. We're also seeing some uptake in hotels and caterers, as we produce a very consistently high quality and ready to eat product,” he said.
Peppou said if Vow gets market approval in Australia, the company will use the same model that has worked in Singapore, handpicking a few restaurants that align well and then move towards larger groups.
“We don't want to start looking prematurely for customers, but you should see us popping up in restaurants, hotels, farmers markets, and more once we get that final tick of approval,” said Peppou.
“The approval will apply to Australia and New Zealand, but we’ll be focused on east coast Australia, especially Sydney and Melbourne, first and foremost.”
When asked what makes Vow’s cultured meat appeal to consumers, Peppou said the careful balance of novelty and familiarity was something the company had tried to strike when producing quail as its first product.
“It's something which people have heard of and are aware is meat, but it's unlikely to be something that people have eaten frequently,” said Peppou.
“It’s unintimidating, but still quite distinct. It also works well with chefs, because it's something that traditionally takes a lot of skill to prepare, with very low yield. With our product there’s 100 per cent yield, and no real skill required to prepare the ingredients. Those things seem to be resonating well.
“My view is that cultured meat is never going to be a direct meat replacement. Our goal was therefore never to try to replicate beef, chicken, or pork – anything that farmers produce so well already. Instead our goal is to create foods positioned as being distinct from anything that you get from animals,” he said.
Next steps for industry
In terms of the global market for cell-cultured meat, Peppou said he believes there is an intense period of contraction happening right now.
“There are only five companies in the world with regulatory approval – Vow, Upside Foods, Eat Just, Mission Barns, and Aleph Farms – but both Aleph Farms in Israel and Mission Barns in the US are still waiting on secondary approval,” said Peppou.
“So there's three companies who have actually been completely approved for sale, and of those, only Vow is actually selling. There's been a huge underperformance, and I think we're going to see a lot of companies cease to operate in the next 18 to 24 months.
“What I expect will come out the other side is a number of companies starting to produce delicacies the way we are, to deliver on unit economics now, and not speculatively, five years down the track. I think we'll start to see it as the staple in restaurants, and creeping into supermarkets in about 12 to 24 months in small volumes,” he said.
In terms of the Australian market, Peppou said that as it's a smaller market, it might not be somewhere that cell-cultured meat producers would approach initially.
“I think Australia has a very unique regulatory regime. We do eat a lot of meat, but at least from the outside, we've been perceived as being very parochial,” he said.
“I think that if companies were to come in with products like cell-cultured beef, they're going to really struggle against that strong national meat eating identity, but I really hope to see other companies coming here in future.”
