In a luxurious way Last week, a handful of media and policymakers at a sushi bar in New York feasted on a menu of sushi rolls, Peking duck tapas and mushroom salad. But what made this menu unusual was the one ingredient that appeared in the dishes: foie gras made from quail cells brewed in a bioreactor. The event, catered by sushi chef Masa Takayama, was a launch party for Australian cultured meat company Vow, which will sell its foie gras in a handful of restaurants in Singapore and Hong Kong.
The meal was decadent – one course included a mountain of black truffle – but that was the main point. Vow and its CEO, George Peppou, view cultured meat as a luxury product – an unusual positioning for an industry where many founders are motivated by animal welfare and face mass-produced meat. But while growing meat in the lab remains shockingly expensive, Peppou is trying to turn the technology's Achilles heel to his advantage.
“I feel like the obituary has already been written for our industry,” he says. “But just because Californians can't do something doesn't mean something can't be done.”
That there is something is making cultured meat and making a profit at the same time. The big challenge facing the industry – along with the bans and lack of venture capital money – is that it costs a lot to grow animal cells in bioreactors. Reliable figures are difficult to come by, but a research paper using data from companies in 2021 estimated the cost of cultured meat at between $68 and $10,000 per pound, depending on production methods. Many startups say they have dramatically reduced production costs since their first experiments, but prices are still much higher than factory-farmed chicken: about $2.67 per pound.
The two best-funded startups in this space – Eat Just and Upside Foods – have both launched cultured chicken products. But Peppou, who relies on his reputation in the industry as something of a provocateur, says that approach makes no sense. “Making chicken was always a terrible idea,” he says.
The basic principles of cultured meat are expensive. Growing animal cells outside their bodies is usually the domain of medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies. Cultured animal cells are used to make vaccines and medicines, which are sold in small quantities at sky-high prices. The cultured meat industry needs some of the same ingredients to grow the cells it wants to sell as meat, but unlike the pharmaceutical industry, it must grow vast quantities of cells and sell them at supermarket prices.
