French food startup Gourmey is getting in on the cruelty-free meat game with cultivated (AKA lab-made) foie gras.
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.
… 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.
For obvious reasons, animal rights activists are not too keen on it (nor are the ducks).
… 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.