French foodtech Gourmey has submitted applications to UK and EU regulators for the authorisation of its cultivated foie gras. It marks the first novel food application to be submitted to the EU’s European Commission for the sale of cultivated meat — if approved, its product can be sold across all 27 EU countries. Gourmey also has applications pending in Switzerland, Singapore and the US.
The milestone application comes just weeks after UK startup Meatly became the first in the world to gain regulatory clearance in the UK for its cultivated chicken pet food product.
Foie gras and beyond
Gourmey raised €48m in 2022 to build a production centre in Paris, thought to be the largest cultivated meat production facility in Europe; it’s raised €53m in total from VCs including Earlybird, Point Nine and Air Street Capital.
The company’s initial focus is on foie gras, a premium product made from duck liver. The conventional product is produced by force-feeding poultry until their livers enlarge — the lab-cultivated equivalent removes that process.
Gourmey’s founder told Sifted that the same process can be used to create more widely eaten products. “Foie gras is just the first application of our current know-how,” Nicolas Morin-Forest told Sifted. “With the same starting cells, we can create any type of poultry meat product.”
A flurry of novel food
While Gourmey is the first startup to apply for cultivated meat approval in the EU, other country-specific regulators across Europe have been receiving applications over the past year.
In 2023, Israel-based Aleph Farms submitted its cultivated beef product for approval in the UK and US, France’s Vital Meats applied in the UK for its cultivated chicken earlier this year and UK-based Ivy Farm said it expects approval from the UK’s Food Standards Agency by the end of 2024, with its cultivated sausage to hit shelves in 2025.
Europe is yet to see the approval of any cultivated meat product for consumption by humans — approvals for sale have only been granted in Israel, Singapore and the US.
And consumer sentiment within Europe seems mixed. While the Netherlands has embraced the tech by allowing cultivated meat to be tasted under controlled conditions (and hosted the EU’s first ever cultivated beef tasting earlier this month), Italy has banned the product outright.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/gourmey-eu-cultivated-meat-news/
