Lab-Grown Foie Gras Hits the Market

Introduction

Australian cultivated meat firm Vow has launched lab-grown foie gras, a luxury product made from quail cells brewed in a bioreactor. This innovative approach offers a controversial future for the cultivated meat industry.

Conventional Foie Gras vs. Lab-Grown Alternative

Conventional foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks or geese until their livers swell with fatty deposits. Production is banned in several countries due to animal welfare concerns. In contrast, Vow’s lab-grown foie gras uses quail cells and a plant-based fat mix, making it a more humane alternative.

Market Strategy

Vow’s CEO, Peppou, has chosen to target the luxury market with his product, priced at hundreds of dollars per pound. This approach aims to shape consumer sentiment around cultivated meat as a high-end proposition. In contrast, other companies like SuperMeat are focusing on the mass market and aiming for lower production costs.

Cost-Effective Strategies

Cultivated meat companies need to find cheaper sources for their ingredients and buy them in bulk to drive down costs. One option is to mix cultivated meat with plant-based ingredients, as seen in products from Eat Just and SuperMeat. This strategy can help reduce costs and make cultivated meat more competitive.

Environmental Benefits

The industry hopes that customers will pay premium prices due to the potential environmental benefits of making meat outside animal bodies. Companies are exploring ways to scale up production and achieve monumental growth to compete with conventional meat products.

Conclusion

Lab-grown foie gras represents a luxury proposition for the cultivated meat industry, offering a high-end alternative to traditional foie gras. As companies like Vow continue to innovate and explore cost-effective strategies, the future of cultivated meat looks promising. However, scaling up production to compete with conventional meat will require monumental growth and creative approaches to market entry.

Cost-Effective Options

SuperMeat’s Savir aims to partner with food manufacturers who might license his technology to add cultivated meat into their mix of options. Dutch company Meatable has indicated it wants to follow a similar approach, licensing its technology to firms that already produce much of the US’s meat.

The Road Ahead

Even though Peppou is targeting the luxury market, he still isn’t turning a profit on his cultured quail parfait or foie gras. The route ahead for Vow might not look totally different from other cultivated meat companies, with low volumes and mostly restaurant sales in the short term.

The industry is also hoping that customers will pay premium prices because of the potential environmental benefits of making meat outside of animal bodies. Savir says he has spoken with a “very big” pizza company that says replacing just 5 to 10 percent of its chicken toppings with cultivated chicken would make a substantial dent in its carbon footprint.

A Monumental Scaling-Up

Even replacing a fraction of a percent of the $50 billion broiler chicken industry in the US would require a monumental scaling-up of cultivated meat production. Companies are having to get creative about how they plan to get products into the world and achieve many founders’ ultimate goal of displacing at least some conventional meat production.

Australian cultivated meat firm Vow has launched lab-grown foie gras, a luxury product made from quail cells brewed in a bioreactor. The company will sell its foie gras at a handful of restaurants in Singapore and Hong Kong.

A Luxury Product for the Few

Vow’s quail parfait is on the menu at around six restaurants in Singapore, including being sold as a $20 SGD ($15) bar snack and as part of a $250 SGD tasting menu. The company’s CEO, Peppou, believes that targeting the luxury market is a way to spin cultivated meat’s high costs and low production volumes as a luxury proposition.

Scalability and Industrialization

Ido Savir, CEO of Israeli cultivated meat company SuperMeat, has released a report estimating that if produced at scale, it could grow chicken meat at $11.80 per pound, close to the price for pasture-raised chicken in the US. However, this assumes production in bioreactors up to 25,000 liters, several orders of magnitude higher than the 10-liter scale the company is currently working at.