Consumers could soon get a taste of cultivated quail, after Australian alternative protein firm Vow received the regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to sell their product here, the second such company to do so.

The Forged Parfait, sold under the cultured meat brand Forged, was unveiled in a media tasting at the Mandala Club’s Mori restaurant on April 3, where it was paired with four dishes, including a Hokkaido wagyu sandwich and a savoury cannoli paired with caviar. 

Resembling a creamy liver pate, the Forged Parfait had a rich, umami flavour to it, with slightly gamey undertones.

From the get-go, the firm set its sights on more unorthodox types of meat, so it would not have to compete on taste with “real meat”, said Vow’s co-founder and chief executive George Peppou.

“People have a general vibe of what quail tastes like, but they don’t have a very distinct impression of its taste as they would with other conventional types of meat,” he said. 

He said the company had wanted to create a product that was “distinctly different” from meat that consumers are already accustomed to, such as chicken, pork or beef. 

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With the parfait, which is produced in Sydney, the company had worked to bring out the “gaminess of quail” by mixing it with different ingredients like butter, seasoning and cognac. 

Starting with a small sample of cells taken from a Japanese species of quail, scientists identified and isolated the cells that would contribute to the parfait’s taste and texture.

These cells were then moved to a bioreactor – a stainless steel tank similar to the ones found in a brewery – to help recreate the natural growth conditions needed for the quail cells to proliferate. 

Peppou said Vow received approval from the SFA for the sale of cultivated quail as a food ingredient. The process took around 15 months.

The licence gives the firm the flexibility to develop all kinds of quail-derived food products, including whole meat cuts, without the need for further approval from the authorities.

The Forged Parfait is part of a $289 seven-course omakase menu with alcoholic drink pairings at Mori from April 12 to 27.

Without revealing further details, Peppou said the company is working with other restaurants here for a slate of product launches using cultivated quail as the key ingredient.

The company is also looking at launching production plants at a few locations globally as it continues to expand its operations.

Amid cost-cutting pressures, the global cultivated meat industry is facing numerous headwinds.

California-based Upside Foods, one of only two companies approved to sell cultivated chicken in the US, also put plans to build a factory for large-scale production on hold. 

Closer to home, two Singapore-based start-ups focusing on creating cultivated seafood, Shiok Meats and Umami Bioworks (formerly known as Umami Meats), in March 2024 announced a merger to accelerate regulatory approvals and market introduction of its products.

Singapore production of Californian start-up Eat Just’s cultivated chicken, the world’s first cell-cultured meat product to have received approval here, also did not materialise in the third quarter of 2023 as slated.

Nonetheless, Peppou said he remains confident in Vow’s abilities to buck the trend through its unique value proposition.

Vow has raised some US$49.2 million (S$73.4) in funding, compared to around US$608 million raised by Temasek-backed Upside Foods and US$850 million by Eat Just. 

Peppou felt that the company has truly “done more” with less money, by focusing the entirety of its efforts over the course of five years in developing a tasty, novel product that has not been achieved before. 

Vow was the company behind the viral “mammoth meatball” revealed at the Nemo Science museum in the Netherlands in April 2023, created using the DNA of the extinct woolly mammoth.

The meatball, somewhere between a softball and a volleyball in size and not for consumption, required the cultivation of more than 40 billion cells.

Vow co-founder Tim Noakesmith told The Straits Times then that the firm wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of science to bring back animals that have gone extinct, and to promote a new form of sustainable consumption through cultivated meat. THE STRAITS TIMES