In a significant shift for the cultivated meat space in Aotearoa New Zealand, in June 2025 cultivated meat company Vow was given local regulatory approval to market their products for human consumption by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). Vow has been selling cultivated quail in Singapore since April 2024, under the Forged brand. The product’s FSANZ approval resulted in the regulatory agency making new additions to the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (FSC) through Amendment No. 239, creating a defined regulatory pathway for cell-based agriculture building on existing food safety risk management frameworks. As a result of these changes, Australia and New Zealand have jointly become the second jurisdiction after the US with a regulatory process tailored specifically for cell-cultured meats, as opposed to a more generic novel foods framework.
The amendment defines “cell-cultured foods” in Standard 1.5.4 as “a food obtained by culturing cells isolated from any of the following sources: livestock; poultry; game; seafood (including fish); an egg or an embryo of any of the former”. The standard goes on to state that foods permitted for use as ingredients in Australia and New Zealand must be listed in Schedule 25A, with the cell-cultured quail associated with the Vow application the only current entry (derived from cell line 221523-Fib-Quail). These ingredients may not be used in “special purpose” foods, such as food for infants, sports foods, or foods with a special medical purpose, as listed under Part 2.9 of the FSANZ Code. Food containing listed ingredients must be labelled as “cell-cultured” or “cell-cultivated”, and may not be labelled as “poultry meat”.
The new food safety requirements for cell-culturing are set out in standard 3.4.1. Standard 3.4.1 relates to assessed cell-line traceability, bioreactor controls, food handling at each stage of the cell culturing process, temperature control, and contamination prevention. Schedule 27 of the code was amended to include microbiological limits on cell-cultured food (Salmonella and Listeria must not be detected within 25 g of cell-cultured product).
The introduction of these standards give clear guidelines to future entries into the New Zealand cell-based agriculture space. It is likely subsequent FSANZ applications to sell cell-cultured meat locally will be faster and more cost-effective. Cellular agriculture companies are increasingly focusing on the Asia-Pacific region due to cultural and political scepticism in other jurisdictions. Paris-based cellular agriculture company Parima has applied for regulatory approval through this new pathway, and other potential entrants into the local market will be watching to gauge the efficiency of this new approval process. It is estimated that the approval process, FSANZ’s General (Level 5) Procedure, should take less than one year.