French startup Gourmey has submitted an application to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), seeking regulatory approval for its cultivated duck.
If approved, the cultivated duck will be mixed with other authorized ingredients to create products such as foie gras and duck pâté. It will be used at an inclusion rate of 5% to 80% by weight of the finished food.
The application will be assessed as a General (Level 5) procedure rather than a Major procedure; as a result, the process will only require one round of public consultation and should take under a year. As reported by Cellular Agriculture Australia, the expected completion date is late August 2026.
The news comes after Vow received FSANZ approval for its cultivated quail in April of this year, before receiving final regulatory approval in July. The company was the first to gain permission to commercialize cultivated meat in Australia.
Gourmey seeks international approvals
Last year, Gourmey became the first company to apply for regulatory approval for cultivated meat in the EU. At the time, the startup said it had also submitted applications in Singapore, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.
In July, Gourmey’s UK application was approved by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS), making the company the first in the country to receive this validation. The approval marked the commencement of Gourmey’s regulatory assessment process in the UK.
Last week, Gourmey completed the acquisition of Vital Meat, a developer of poultry cell-line technology. Through the acquisition, a new entity named PARIMA has been formed, focusing on the production of next-generation animal products through scalable, cell-based cultivation techniques.
“Through rigorous characterization and adherence to GMP principles, the safety and nutritional adequacy of cultured duck cells have been thoroughly established,” says Gourmey’s application to FSANZ. “Analytical data from multiple batches confirm compliance with specifications appropriate for the novel food, demonstrating the absence of biological, chemical, and physical hazards to ensure safety for consumption.”
