{"id":300925,"date":"2025-06-18T21:18:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T21:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/activist\/australias-first-lab-grown-meat-will-be-on-menus-within-weeks-australian-food-and-drink\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T21:18:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T21:18:03","slug":"australias-first-lab-grown-meat-will-be-on-menus-within-weeks-australian-food-and-drink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=300925","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s first lab-grown meat will be on menus within weeks | Australian food and drink"},"content":{"rendered":"


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For over a decade, lab-grown meat has been hailed as the food of tomorrow \u2013 a plate changing technological innovation that is right around the corner. Now, in Australia, tomorrow has finally come.<\/p>\n

After a two-year-long approval process, Food<\/a> Standards Australia New Zealand has given Australian food technology startup Vow foods the green light to sell three products made from cultured quail cells.<\/p>\n

Vow\u2019s \u201cforged\u201d whipped pate, foie gras and an edible tallow candle, all made from cultured Japanese quail cells, will soon be on the menu at high-end Australian restaurants including Bottarga in Melbourne and Nel in Sydney. The products have been available in Singapore for over a year, with Vow stating demand has grown by 200% a month.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>George Peppou, CEO and founder of Vow.<\/span> Photograph: The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cultivating animal cells is an error-prone process. Vow is one of only three companies worldwide approved to sell lab-grown meat for human consumption. US-based start up Eat Just<\/a> has sold lab-grown chicken on and off in Singapore since 2023 under the name Good Meat; while another US company, Upside Foods, has regulatory approval to sell cultured chicken cell products in the US, but does not currently have any in the market.<\/p>\n

The CEO of Vow, George Peppou, is taking a very different approach from these competitors. Rather than asking customers to pay $71 a kg for frozen shredded \u201cchicken\u201d, he says the company is embracing the high cost of cultivating cells by creating products to match the price.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe selected going with these very high end products, very high end positioning \u2026 as a way of trying to shape and influence food culture as much as possible,\u201d he says. While foie gras prices fluctuate significantly, at the time of writing Vow\u2019s Forged foie was cheaper than the real deal.<\/p>\n

A few weeks before Vow\u2019s offerings gain approval, I visit the company\u2019s Sydney factory to taste them. Unlike other Guardian Australia reporters, who have had to sign liability waivers before eating lab-grown foods, this sample session came with no paperwork.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Synthetic parfait on potato chips with chopped chives and lemon myrtle oil.<\/span> Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First, Vow\u2019s product development manager Kevin Condon pipes portions of their synthetic parfait on to potato chips, which he tops with chopped chives and lemon myrtle oil.<\/p>\n

Velvety, savoury and very rich, it tastes close enough to chicken liver parfait that I could easily be fooled. Made with 60% cultured cells, the rest is a mixture of cognac, garlic, olive oil, thyme and butter, emulsified to give it a silky texture. Condon says they wanted the flavour to be \u201cvery familiar\u201d, while the texture is preternaturally fluffy. \u201cLivers have that inherent grittiness and graininess,\u201d Condon says, so making a parfait this mousse-like the conventional way would be impossible, \u201cno matter how many times you sieve it\u201d.<\/p>\n

The foie is far less convincing. Served seared with scallop, berries and micro-greens, it is intensely savoury with a browned, meaty crust. Inside the texture is almost bouncy, like spam, without the unctuous, mouth-coating effect of foie gras. It has none of the metallic, organ funk either. When I tell the Vow team I haven\u2019t tasted anything like it, they break into smiles. Making something new, rather than an alternative, is sort of the point.<\/p>\n

Peppou says that talking with chefs taught them foie gras\u2019 heavy, offal flavour is something \u201ca lot of people find really unpleasant\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Served seared with scallop, berries and micro-greens, the foie gras is intensely savoury with a browned, meaty crust.<\/span> Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAnd so instead we\u2019ve toned it down\u201d.<\/p>\n

The tallow candle, which melts down so bread can be dipped into it, tastes remarkably like a candle. It turns out the flavour is all in the wick.<\/p>\n

The reason for cultivating quail cells, then turning them into products with fairly homogenous textures, isn\u2019t all about perceived luxuriousness. Over the years, Vow has cultivated cells from about 50 species \u2013 including a giant meatball made of woolly mammoth<\/a> \u2013 and have found that \u201csmaller is easier,\u201d Peppou says. Japanese quail was one of the first cells they found to \u201cgrow really well\u201d.<\/p>\n

As for the texture, Vow isn\u2019t growing whole quail breasts in petri-dishes. Cells are nourished in a vat, then harvested using a centrifuge. The end result is a homogenous, pale pink goo that is \u201cnot much to look at,\u201d Peppou says. To get cells from this state into viable foodstuff requires manufacturing processes that are less scientifically advanced, but no-less technically challenging, than growing them in the first place.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>The end result is a homogenous, pale pink goo that is \u201cnot much to look at,\u201d Peppou says.<\/span> Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe knew we could get really consistent high quality with homogenous textures much faster than we can with the more complex texture,\u201d Peppou says.<\/p>\n

Vow\u2019s cavernous 2,071 square metre factory is home to the world\u2019s largest food-grade bioreactor, nicknamed Andromeda.<\/p>\n

Andromeda resembles a whiskey still designed by MC Escher. It is seven metres tall, with dozens of pipes running in and out of it. \u201cIf you talk to people that have come from biopharmaceutical cell culture, they will tell you it\u2019s very complex, it\u2019s very difficult,\u201d Peppou says. In reality, he finds it is \u201cincrementally more complex than beer brewing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Several Vow factory employees are former brewers, though they\u2019ve also hired biomedical and aeronautical engineers, and Vow\u2019s CTO is a former SpaceX employee. This disparate group has managed to build what Peppou says is \u201cby orders of magnitude the cheapest factory for cell culture in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

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