Foie gras, hold the guilt

Startup Gourmey is reinventing foie gras by growing it in a lab.

French food startup Gourmey is getting in on the cruelty-free meat game with cultivated (AKA lab-made) foie gras.

Foie gras, hold the guilt

The faux foie just raised a $48m series A round — the largest for a cultivated meat company — to reimagine the highly controversial food, per Forbes.

Foie gras…

… which means “fat liver” in French, is the liver of a duck or goose, and is considered a culinary delicacy. But it’s made through a particularly cruel process, and was once banned in California.

  • To farm foie gras, animals are force-fed corn using a 4.5k-year-old process known as gavage to enlarge their livers, making them smoother and less bitter.

For obvious reasons, animal rights activists are not too keen on it (nor are the ducks).

Enter Gourmey…

… which uses animal stem cells to grow cultivated meat in a lab. The process eliminates the need to farm animals and produces nearly identical results.

If saving the ducks doesn’t do it for you, foie gras has a high carbon footprint relative to other foods. Plus, a looming shortage in France is threatening supply.

Stay tuned, because the cultivated food revolution is just getting started. Your sushi roll could be next.

Topics: Food

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