Developed in a lab and grown in a vat: It’s meat, but not as you know it

Take a few cells of Japanese quail from a real animal, reproduce them in a giant vat using a similar method to growing a sourdough culture, separate the meat cells using a centrifuge, then mix the resulting goo with butter, brandy, port wine and various herbs and spices.

That’s the recipe for Vow’s Forged Parfait, one of the first cultured meat products available commercially anywhere in the world. It’s been sampled by the likes of software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, an investor through his family office, and federal independent MP Allegra Spender who said it was “inspiring to see another Australian company leading the world in an emerging area”.

George Peppou, chief executive and co-founder of Vow, in the new manufacturing space in the inner-Sydney suburb of Alexandria.Credit: Jessica Hromas

Vow chief executive and co-founder George Peppou, who has worked as a chef and for Meat & Livestock Australia, said his personal motivation is the environmental benefits of cultured meat over rearing animals for food, but this is not his marketing pitch to consumers.

“People will often make decisions that are unrelated to or contradictory to their values. For example, I eat meat and beef regularly, even though it’s a really high-emitting food, because it is a really great source of iron and it’s really tasty,” Peppou said.

“We see this pattern time and time again. Environmental sustainability and ethics don’t drive consumer behaviour consistently even in niche markets, let alone in mainstream consumer segments.”

Instead, Peppou wants to make a novel product that meat eaters will “choose for selfish reasons” because it is delicious, or to achieve certain nutritional goals.

The Forged Parfait is the first in a luxury line that is already being exported to high-end restaurants in Singapore. Vow is also planning a supermarket range more focused on nutrition.

As the global population grows and becomes wealthier, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts meat consumption to grow 12 per cent from 2020 to 2030, which will put pressure on greenhouse emissions and land use.

Land clearing for cattle grazing is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation globally, and the European Union is implementing new rules for beef imports to tackle this problem due to take effect in January 2025.

Credit: Matt Golding

State government data for NSW and Queensland suggests agriculture, especially pasture, is the biggest cause of land clearing.

Greenpeace claims that a large football field-sized area of forest and bushland is bulldozed in Australia every two minutes, putting Australia alongside places like the Amazon, Congo and Borneo on the scale of destruction. Last week the environmental charity released a scorecard giving supermarkets and fast food giants a “fail” in removing deforestation from their supply chains.

But Cattle Australia, which represents grass-fed beef farmers, disputes this, and the organisation released a draft definition of “deforestation” earlier this month.

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt wrote to the EU commissioner and the EU agriculture commissioner a few weeks ago asking for a delay to ensure the policy is implemented fairly.

A spokesperson for Watt said: “Statistics associating Australia with deforestation often combine clearing of primary forest, re-clearing of regrowth forest, and clearing of non-forest vegetation into a single number and do not include the extent of forest regrowth and establishment occurring within Australia.”

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has written to the EU asking it to delay incoming rules for beef imports.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The main way to scale up meat production is to use factory farming methods that use less land, but these are more emissions intensive and have huge problems with animal welfare and pollution from animal waste.

Peppou said Vow’s initial assessments suggest the emissions profile for its quail-based parfait would sit just above chicken on an emissions-per-kilogram basis, using its current production system. The company believes it can further reduce its emissions through process improvements and economies of scale, but it is awaiting external validation before releasing any figures publicly.

In Australia and New Zealand, the UN figures show chicken has a greenhouse gas emissions profile equivalent to 3.86 kilograms of carbon dioxide, while Australian beef is 6½ times higher than chicken.

Australian beef is mainly grass fed rather than raised on grain in feedlots, and it already has much lower emissions than the global average, but it is still high compared with other meat and other protein sources, mainly because cattle burps and farts are high in methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The cultured meat cells replicate in giant vats, in a process like brewing or growing a sourdough starter.Credit: Jessica Hromas

Australia has signed up to a voluntary global methane pledge to cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

Last week burger restaurant chain Grill’d announced that it would exclusively stock Gamechanger beef at no extra cost in seven of its outlets. The cattle reared for Gamechanger beef are fed with seaweed pellets developed by SeaForest, which reduces methane.

Cultured meat has faced legislative bans in Italy and Florida in a pushback to protect farmers. This often has a flavour of the culture wars; The New York Times quoted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as saying the ban was to fight “global elites” who have a “plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a Petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals”.

Globally, there are many cultured-meat start-ups with products in the pipeline, but most are trying to replicate meat that already exists, such as a steak or a chicken breast.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has criticised the potential introduction of cultured meat.Credit: AP

Peppou is unconcerned about the prospect of bans proliferating, but also believes directly competing with existing meat products is the wrong approach because it puts the meat industry offside, and meat eaters are unlikely to buy the cultured version of a familiar product when it’s sitting in the supermarket right next to the real thing. It is also much easier to grow undifferentiated cells than tendons and other body parts.

Instead, Vow is going for novelty, and future products could even mix cells from different animals, such as crocodile and peacock.

While Singapore was first to approve the Forged Parfait as a food, Vow hopes to have approval in Australia soon. Before then, anyone wanting to sample it in Australia needs to sign a waiver.

When this masthead visited, ahead of a public tour for Sydney’s inaugural Climate Action Week, this reporter was served the parfait in a pastry shell with a brulee topping, and asked to give an honest opinion. My verdict? The parfait was rich and smooth, almost unctuous, like a foie gras and slightly salty, in contrast to the sweetness of the caramelised sugar.

Pastry shells containing Forged Parfait with a brulee topping.Credit: Jessica Hromas

Research and development is done in a laboratory, but Peppou does not like the term “lab-grown meat”, since the production set-up is more akin to a brewery. Vow produced 145 kilograms of the parfait in April and has installed equipment to quickly increase that tenfold, with room in the premises to expand it a hundredfold.

Peppou grew up in Sydney and hopes to be able to stay in Australia, but says that will depend on being able to recruit staff, including obtaining visas for international hires, and the availability and cost of renewable energy.

Vow is backed by venture capital including Blackbird Ventures, Cannon-Brookes’ family office Grok Ventures, and HostPlus Super in Australia. The most recent round raised $US49.8 million ($74.4 million) from global investors.

Lucinda Hankin, head of venture at Grok Ventures, described the product as delicious, and said: “Meat and dairy production account for 14.5 per cent of global [greenhouse gas] emissions. Cultured meat products, including Forged by Vow, have the potential to replace traditional meat products at a materially lower carbon footprint. This footprint will continue to decline with low-cost renewables powering manufacturing.”

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