PARIMA clears key Australia-New Zealand regulatory hurdle for cultivated meat

PARIMA has completed the core safety risk assessment stage of the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) novel food approval process for cultivated meat, marking another major regulatory milestone for the French cultivated protein company as it expanded its global commercialization strategy.

• PARIMA completed the core FSANZ safety risk assessment for cultivated meat in Australia and New Zealand.
• The company said it became the first cultivated meat company outside the region to reach this stage within the FSANZ approval pathway.
• The milestone followed Singapore approvals for PARIMA’s cultivated chicken and cultivated duck in October 2025 and April 2026 respectively.

The update was announced by Nicolas Morin-Forest, CEO & Co-Founder of PARIMA, who described the development as the company’s third regulatory milestone in under a year.

“PARIMA has completed the core safety risk assessment of Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s novel food approval process for cultivated meat in Australia and New Zealand, the first company outside the region to reach this stage, and only the second in the world,” Morin-Forest wrote in a LinkedIn post.

The completion of the core safety assessment represented one of the final major stages in the FSANZ approval pathway before public consultation and final approval.

“With this critical step passed, we are now in the final stages of the process pending public consultation and final approval,” Morin-Forest said.

The milestone further extended PARIMA’s increasingly active global regulatory strategy, which accelerated following the merger of French cultivated meat companies Gourmey and Vital Meat to form PARIMA in 2025.

The company first entered the Australia-New Zealand regulatory system in October 2025, when FSANZ formally accepted its cultivated duck dossier into the scientific risk assessment process. At the time, PARIMA became the first international cultivated meat company to officially enter regulatory review in the two countries, following earlier progress by Australian startup Vow.

The application sought approval for cultivated duck products, including duck meat analogs such as cultivated foie gras and duck pâté.

PARIMA’s submission included detailed scientific and safety data covering cell-line characterization, manufacturing controls, product composition, microbiological safety, allergenicity, and nutritional analysis.

According to FSANZ documentation published during the process, the cultivated duck ingredient was produced using duck embryonic stem cells isolated from fertilized Pekin duck eggs. The production cell line was non-genetically modified and underwent genomic and karyotyping analyses to confirm identity and stability.

The company’s manufacturing process used what it described as a 'continuous seed train' approach, in which cells expanded in smaller systems were transferred into larger bioreactors for harvest, with portions of each batch retained to seed future production runs.

PARIMA also submitted analytical data from multiple production batches covering nutrient composition, heavy metals, microbiological safety, residual media components, and allergenicity testing.

The progress in Australia and New Zealand followed a series of regulatory milestones in Singapore, where PARIMA secured approval for cultivated chicken in October 2025 before receiving authorization for cultivated duck in April 2026.

The cultivated chicken approval made PARIMA the first European company cleared to market cultivated meat for human consumption. The later duck approval made the company the first cultivated protein business globally to secure regulatory clearance across two species.

“Following the approvals of our cultivated chicken and duck by the Singapore Food Agency in October 2025 and April 2026, respectively, our production platform is now validated across two species and in two distinct jurisdictions,” Morin-Forest wrote this week.

“Further proving that our products and processes consistently meet the most rigorous safety requirements.”

Singapore has become one of the most important regulatory reference points for cultivated meat companies globally, having established the world’s first formal approval pathway for cultivated foods. PARIMA’s repeated success within the system strengthened the company’s position among a relatively small group of cultivated protein companies successfully advancing through formal regulatory frameworks.

The latest FSANZ milestone also highlighted how cultivated meat regulation increasingly moved beyond isolated approvals toward broader international regulatory coordination and commercialization planning.

Rather than pursuing single-market launches, companies such as PARIMA were now simultaneously navigating multiple regulatory systems across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America.

Morin-Forest credited PARIMA’s internal regulatory team with helping manage that increasingly complex process.

“A special credit to PARIMA’s regulatory team, who is carrying our global regulatory strategy across continents,” he wrote.

He also thanked FSANZ directly for “the efficiency of their review process.”

The announcement came during a period of increasing scrutiny around cultivated meat commercialization timelines and industrial scalability.

While the sector attracted enormous investment and attention earlier in the decade, companies increasingly faced pressure to demonstrate not only technological viability, but also regulatory credibility, manufacturing consistency, and cost reduction pathways.

Against that backdrop, regulatory approvals became one of the clearest indicators separating commercially advancing companies from earlier-stage startups.

PARIMA has steadily built one of the industry’s more extensive regulatory pipelines. Following the merger between Gourmey and Vital Meat, the company said it had active submissions across Europe, Asia, North America, and Oceania.

At the time of the cultivated chicken approval in Singapore, Morin-Forest said the company’s broader objective was to create a scalable multi-species cultivated protein platform capable of supplying both premium and high-volume markets.

“This approval is a testament to our approach,” he said in October 2025. “It validates the safety and robustness of the core foundation of our multi-species platform and strengthens our position to lead the market introduction of high-quality, economically viable cultivated proteins across multiple markets.”

The company has focused heavily on cultivated poultry products, particularly duck applications linked to foodservice and culinary markets, while also developing larger-scale production systems designed for broader commercial rollout.

PARIMA’s latest progress in Australia and New Zealand suggested that strategy continued gaining regulatory traction across multiple jurisdictions.

“The journey continues,” Morin-Forest wrote.