In Belgium, cultivated meat startup Paleo is considering legal action over a competitor’s lab-grown mammoth meat claims.
Australia’s Vow recently made international headlines for producing a meatball using cells from wooly mammoths preserved in permafrost. Vow claims to be the first company to have done so, but Paleo tells Sifted it got there first, having produced mammoth myoglobin two years ago, and, in August of 2022, growing enough meat to make a burger patty.
“When we learned about [Vow’s claim], we were surprised,” says Hermes Sanctorum, CEO of Paleo. “We sent out a press release nine months ago to announce that we developed the exact same mammoth protein.”
Paleo had submitted a patent application for its mammoth myoglobin, that, despite still being under review, would be visible to other companies. “If another company is using that technology to make something and make a large claim, like being the world’s first, that’s highly unethical,” Sanctorum adds.
For its part, Vow told Sifted the “technology and innovation involved in Vow’s creation and presentation of the “Mammoth Meatball” owes nothing to any technology or alleged invention by Paleo.”
While Vow did not taste its mammoth meat, citing allergen concerns, Sanctorum sampled Paleo’s burger. He characterized the taste as similar to beef but more intense. “It’s very interesting,” he says. “The aromatic compounds are much stronger than in bovine myoglobin. It’s stronger in aroma, color and taste—which is interesting for the food industry.”