An Australian company that created a woolly mammoth meatball has won approval from Singapore to sell its cultured quail meat in the city-state.
The lab-grown parfait made from the cells of a Japanese quail doesn’t require any animal slaughter, Vow said in a statement on Thursday.
Singapore, which imports the bulk of its food, was the first country to allow the sale of lab-created meat in 2020. Vow is the second company after Eat Just Inc to get the green light from the city-state.
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved the sale of Vow’s cultured quail cells last month. “SFA has assessed that the novel food is safe for consumption,” the regulator said in an emailed response to a query from Bloomberg News.
Singapore is Vow’s first overseas market. The company last year created a meatball from the DNA of a woolly mammoth that gives flavour to red meat and filled in gaps with DNA from an African elephant.
“The future of cultured meat is not in replicating what already exists, but in creating deliberately different foods designed for meat-eaters,” Vow chief executive officer George Peppou said.
The once-hot lab-grown meat industry is struggling with an investment pull-back and increased production costs. Eat Just, which had plans to open Asia’s largest cultivated meat plant in Singapore, paused operations in the city-state earlier this year, the Straits Times reported.