In Episode 159 of the Disruptors for Good podcast, we speak with George Peppou, Founder and CEO of Vow, on inventing a new category of food from animal cells and disrupting food production around the world.

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About George Peppou

Prior to founding Vow in 2019, George founded GrowLab in 2017, an Australian accelerator for agrifood tech startups.

From 2015 – 2017, he was a design innovation practitioner at the UTS Design Innovation Research Center where he led the development and delivery of design innovation programs for Federal Government clients facing complex, sector-level challenges.

In-between these jobs, George also worked as a course director, lecturer, and tutor at the University of Technology Sydney where taught topics like the process and methods of inventions, as well as how to approach sector-level transformation and strategy.

Earlier in his career, he worked as an inventor for a company called Intellectual Ventures and later as a research analyst for the University of Technology Sydney.

What is Cellular Agriculture?

Cellular agriculture is a branch of food technology that deals with the production of animal cells in a controlled environment. It is an alternative to traditional livestock farming and could potentially provide a more efficient and sustainable way to produce meat and other animal products.

The first step in cellular agriculture is to culture cells from an animal in a laboratory setting. These cells are then placed in a nutrient-rich environment that allows them to grow and multiply. Once the cells have reached a certain size, they can be harvested and used to create meat or other animal products.

It could potentially reduce the impact of traditional livestock farming on the environment, and provide a more humane option for those who do not want to eat animals that have been raised in factory farms.

Read more about cellular agriculture here.

About Vow

Vow is built on a diverse, cross-functional team of innovators, engineers, scientists, artists and most importantly, foodies! They’re reinventing food from the ground up to make it more delicious and sustainable for everyone.

Vow is a cultivated meat company working to make the food industry more progressive in environmentally sustainable ways.

George and co-founder Tim Noakesmitha launched Vow in April 2019 after previously bonding over wanting to find a solution to replace animal agriculture with a more sustainable method of food production.

Vow has recently experienced tremendous company growth using state-of-the-art cultured meat technology—where new meat products are produced directly from the cells of animals instead of the animals themselves.

How it Works

Cell curation

They cultivate the perfect combination of cells for their ability to self renew, and for ideal flavor, texture, and aromas.

Their unique combination of cell biology, robotics, and software engineering allows Vow to decipher information contained at the deepest level of the cell faster than anyone else – where the keys to new flavor, texture and nutrition have been hidden until now.

The best cells for food are stored in a proprietary multi-species cell library. Over time they’ll gather hundreds of possible combinations, which form the building blocks of future products.

Prepare and Nourish

Vow then adds essential micronutrients that help create a tasty textured meat profile. It’s like your favorite recipe, but at a molecular level, providing quality, purity, and consistency better than any meat.

Pure Nurture

Vow then places the cells inside climate-controlled cultivators – creating a natural course of forming muscle, fat, and connective tissue in the safest way possible.

Package into a Range of Branded Consumer Products

This is the Vow. The moment they’ve all been hoping, working, and dreaming toward. A curated range of tasty, meat options with different flavor profiles for you to cook, serve, dine, and to be delighted by!

The Potential of This on the World

• Feeding ten billion people becomes reality. Fast.
• No more ethical headaches around meat.
• Mother Earth gets some much-needed R&R.
• More options for different consumers, with different needs, anywhere in the world.
• A cell library to fit any culture and diet.
• More delicious and nutritious food options for everyone.
• Getting food down to an exact science means reliable and delicious quality every time, everywhere.
• The prevention of food illness pandemics with a safer solution to food.

Interview Transcript

00:09

Host: Thank you so much, George, for joining me today. Super excited to chat about Vow Foods and cellular agriculture, cultured meat in general. It’s sort of sweeping the world as a food disruption mechanism. First, congrats on the Series A funding. This will obviously help propel Vow’s mission and vision. Before we get into everything Vow and food disruption, let’s talk about your journey before Vow.

00:43

George: I feel like I’ve wandered into the perfect background. As a teenager, I was both studying a biochemistry degree full-time while working full-time as a chef. So I’ve always had this mix of science and culinary arts.

I gave the chef thing a go, went into fine dining briefly, but realized it was poorly paid factory work at weird times. So I decided that wasn’t for me and went into technical invention, applying technical solutions to solve problems in food.

I worked with the meat industry, horticulture industry, grains industry, and others before forming the view that transforming incumbent companies wasn’t going to create a sustainable and socially equitable food system. So I started a startup accelerator called Grow Lab, focusing on food and agricultural technology companies.

Over two and a half years, I made about 17 investments across the supply chain. Working with these founders, the problem of meat and animal agriculture kept coming up, so I pulled on that thread and it led to Vow.

02:41

Host: Were the companies you funded global or mostly Australian? Did any focus on cellular agriculture or cultured meat?

03:00

George: They were all Australian companies, though some have gone international, like Regrow Ag and Wacom. None were in the cellular agriculture space. They were applications of well-understood technologies to problems within food. They were compelling, but I was looking for something I could dedicate the next 20 or 30 years to. Transforming traditional supply chains wasn’t it, so I turned to Vow and its different approach.

04:09

Host: Let’s talk about Vow’s mission and vision.

04:09

George: At Vow, our approach is different from anyone else in cellular agriculture or cultured meat. When I was running Grow Lab, I thought about solving the resource bottleneck in meat.

The question was, why is meat so good? The complexity of animal tissue and the molecules within it make meat great. Plant-based solutions can’t replicate this complexity. Cultured meat, growing meat from animal cells, seemed the way to go.

In 2019, I looked at getting a job with a cultured meat company, but all the founders I spoke to had the same view: replicate existing meats like beef, chicken, or pork, and consumers will switch. I didn’t believe that. I believed in inventing new types of meats that people would choose selfishly because they offer a better experience or nutrition. So at Vow, we’re inventing new types of meat.

We have a library of cells from different species, each with unique properties, and we treat them like ingredients. We combine them to create branded foods, not replacements for existing meats. Our first product is Morsel, made from quail cells. We aim to create new categories of protein that are sustainable and appealing.

07:40

Host: Other companies focus on specific meats like cultured chicken. This can lead to the end of slaughterhouses, a long process but impactful. I also talk to vegetarians and vegans, and many are open to cultured meat if no animals are harmed. It’s a massive deal for health and the environment. New industries can emerge, like eating lion sustainably. What’s your take on that?

10:20

George: Thinking about meat as animals is old-fashioned. You could grow lion, but what’s the point? The odds of traditional meats being the best to grow are low. Our first product, quail, grew better than anything else. We started with muscle samples from dead animals for regulatory reasons. We separate specific cells and grow them. We can produce an extraordinary amount of food from a single cell line, potentially functionally unlimited. This could end mass animal slaughter, regenerate land, and reduce starvation.

13:02

Host: How much cultured meat can a single cell produce?

13:02

George: The quail cell line we’re using is derived from a single cell, and we’ve produced 50 kilos this year without scratching the surface. It can produce many hundreds or thousands of tons. We aim for functionally unlimited production from a single cell line.

14:32

Host: From a utopian perspective, cultured meat could end animal slaughter, regenerate land, and end starvation. What are your thoughts?

14:32

George: I believe biotech innovations like cultured meat will usher in an age of abundance in food, similar to how the internet did with information. Premium foods will become as easy to produce as commodities, reducing price variance and changing our relationship with food.

16:21

Host: Innovation often leaves traditional businesses behind. How will farmers be affected?

16:21

George: Farmers are adaptive. History shows they adjust to changing markets. While traditional meat farming may decline, farmers will shift to crops and other products in demand. Exclusive, high-quality, and ethical meat farming will continue for those who value tradition.

19:45

Host: Meat should be a luxury rather than a commodity. Could we see a renaissance of multi-crop lands instead of monocrops?

20:46

George: I hope so. Plant-based meat relies on industrial monocropping, which isn’t ideal. With advanced automation, mixed cropping could become more cost-effective than monocropping. This would support diverse and sustainable farming practices.

22:02

Host: Cultured meat is expensive to produce. How will you use your recent funding?

22:29

George: Our strategy is to introduce unique products at the high end of the market and keep prices high to generate operating cash flow. We’ll reinvest in technical product development, branding, and scaling. Our funding will build our first commercial product line, increase scale, reduce costs, and continue to develop our platform for creating new foods.

25:16

Host: Will you focus exclusively on building your own brands, or consider other approaches?

25:52

George: We’ll build our own brands exclusively. Long-term value comes from building brands, not technological advantage. Like Cheerios, which had a technical advantage at launch but now relies on brand recognition, we aim to create and own new categories of branded meats.

27:12

Host: How will you introduce Morsel to the market?

27:33

George: In Singapore, we plan a pop-up with multiple chefs showcasing Morsel’s versatility. The first experience will be in food service to ensure every bite is perfect. We’ll learn from Singapore’s launch and apply those learnings in Australia and the US.

28:53

Host: Where are we at globally with regulatory approval for cultured meat?

28:53

George: Regulators are ready and waiting for data from us. Singapore, Australia, and the US are highly engaged and fast-moving. Other regions like Israel, the UK, the Middle East, Japan, and Korea are also prepared to regulate cultured meat. It’s up to us to provide the necessary data to demonstrate safety and manage risks.

30:08

Host: What data do regulators need?

30:20

George: Regulators need us to identify and control risks, similar to any new food product. They focus on nutritional media, cell changes, allergenicity, and ensuring nothing harmful is produced. We test and monitor for these risks to ensure safety.

33:25

Host: Can you make cultured meat allergen-free, potentially allowing people with allergies to eat it?

34:04

George: It’s possible to turn off allergenic proteins, but validating this to a regulator’s satisfaction would take years. The consequence of getting it wrong is high, so we need to ensure it’s 100% safe.

34:52

Host: What are your goals for Vow over the next three to five years?

35:11

George: We want people to enjoy our food, see a cultural shift towards new types of meat, and have manufacturing up and running on multiple continents. If we’re feeding people globally and changing how they think about meat, it will have been a successful few years.

36:01

Host: Thank you, George, for the conversation. Cultured meat is an interesting sector, and its evolution seems inevitable. Best of luck to you and the team.

36:50

George: Thank you so much. Great to speak with you, Grant.