Parima Gets Approval to Sell Cultivated Duck Under Gourmey Brand in Singapore

French cultivated meat pioneer Parima, the parent company of Gourmey and Vital Meat, has obtained regulatory clearance to sell its cultivated duck in Singapore, its second such approval in six months.

Parisian startup Parima has become the first cultivated meat company to receive the regulatory green light for two animal species, following the approval of its duck product by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).

It comes six months after the firm got the go-ahead for its cultivated chicken in Singapore, as part of an application filed by Vital Meat, which merged with Gourmey last year to form Parima.

The duck application was submitted by Gourmey in 2024, and it has now become the fourth cultivated meat product to be approved for sale in the city-state.

“With duck now approved in Singapore, we are entering a new phase focused on commercial launch across both products,” Parima CEO and Gourmey co-founder Nicolas Morin-Forest tells Green Queen.

“Our strategy follows the path that has proven effective for food innovation: start with high-end gastronomy, where Gourmey’s cultivated duck has already earned the endorsement of Michelin-starred chefs and strong interest from leading global meat distributors,” he adds.

“The first step is to launch in Singapore through premium culinary channels. Starting with haute cuisine acts as a catalyst for our future product launches, with chefs serving as the best ambassadors to introduce new product categories to consumers.”

How Parima is working towards low-cost cultivated meat

To make its cultivated meat products, Parima uses “high-performing cell lines” that grow efficiently in large industrial bioreactors. It’s a process that doesn’t require any genetic engineering or modification, and doesn’t depend on scaffolding materials to structure the product.

Instead, the cells grow freely in suspension in a food-grade nutrient medium designed to ensure stability, affordability, and compatibility with global novel food regulations. Last year, the startup partnered with AI specialist DeepLife to develop an avian digital twin to optimise production of its cultivated meat.

Parima currently operates an innovation centre and a pilot facility in central Paris, where it runs multiple 400-litre bioreactors, and a pilot plant near Nantes, equipped with 2,000-litre bioreactors that run daily. Plus, it has a dedicated setup with a 5,000-litre fermenter, which analysis has previously suggested can bring costs down to $3.43 per lb.

“We produce in France and have designed our production process for decentralised manufacturing with partners across key markets, including Asia-Pacific. Because our cells grow in suspension in standard industrial bioreactors, the process can be deployed in partner infrastructure without rebuilding anything from scratch,” says Morin-Forest.

“We are working towards making cultivated meat viable at high volume, and based on where our development stands today, we are more confident than ever that below $5/kg is achievable. That threshold is not a prerequisite to building a compelling business on premium products, but it is what it takes to have real scale and worldwide impact.”

Achieving this would require the right production architecture. “Approaches built on complex cell differentiation, tissue engineering, scaffolding, or expensive growth factors carry cost structures that don’t resolve with volume,” says Forest.

“From the start, we made the choices that make those costs avoidable: suspension culture, no scaffolding, no cell differentiation, low-cost food-grade cell feed, standard industrial bioreactors. Paradoxically, building a scalable platform on such a simple architecture is incredibly hard to get right. We’ve done it across chicken and duck already, with more species in the pipeline.”

A positive sign for Singapore’s novel food space

The Singapore approval demonstrates the platform’s repeated viability across species, ensuring full compliance with all novel food requirements and confirming that its production process is “robust and safe”.

Singapore was the first country to approve the sale of cultivated meat, handing out a green light to Eat Just’s Good Meat brand in 2020. It then cleared Vow’s cultivated quail in 2024, a product that is available in multiple formats across the island’s restaurants. Last year, it gave the go-ahead to Friends & Family Pet Food Company for cell-cultured Kampung bird treats for cats and dogs,

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for the country’s novel food industry. The financial and scale-up challenges being faced by cultivated meat startups have put alternative proteins on the back burner in the country.

They’re no longer part of Singapore’s food strategy, with environment minister Grace Fu citing “higher production costs and weaker-than-expected consumer acceptance globally”. Singapore is currently focusing on R&D to make this sector “more competitive and mainstream”, and approvals such as Parima’s will go a long way in achieving that goal.

The company is positioned to serve the high-end gastronomy space first, followed by a targeted retail rollout. “Parima is attracting interest not only from premium distributors, but also from major agrifood groups for its protein portfolio,” says Morin-Forest.

“Our multi-species approach enables Parima to serve both premium and high-volume markets. Our cultivated chicken is a very versatile ingredient and particularly well-suited for retail launches as we scale production,” he explains.

Parima progressing with global regulatory strategy

While Parima has two products approved in Singapore now, its commercialisation strategy is very much global. The startup has seven active regulatory filings across the world, including in the EU, the UK (it’s the most advanced in both jurisdictions), Switzerland, the US, Australia and New Zealand, and another undisclosed country.

“In all of these markets, we are committed to a continued and constructive dialogue with regulators to ensure cultivated proteins reach consumers at the highest standards of safety and transparency,” says Morin-Forest.

In the UK, its cultivated duck and chicken dossiers have reached the risk assessment stage, the only products to have done so. Here, it’s part of the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) cultivated meat regulatory sandbox, where businesses and regulatory experts are working together to accelerate novel food approvals in the country.

According to the Times, the FSA is hoping to complete safety evaluations for cultivated meat by February 2027, which will then be subject to ministerial approval before being put on restaurant menus and supermarket shelves. Given Parima’s duck dossier is the most advanced, it suggests the company could enter the UK market within the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, Parima’s regulatory dossier for cultivated duck was officially accepted by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) in October. It’s being assessed under FSANZ’s General (Level 5) Procedure, as opposed to its Major Procedure, which cuts the costs and timeline for approval. The regulatory body has earmarked August 2026 as a potential date for clearance.

Parima’s breakthrough comes amid a wave of approvals for cultivated meat over the last year. In 2025, Vow earned the go-ahead from FSANZ too, and Wildtype, Mission Barns and Believer Meats were all cleared to sell their products in the US – the latter, however, closed down shortly after amid financial troubles.

In the US, Eat Just and Upside Foods were the first startups that commercialised cultivated meat, back in 2023. Upside Foods is now eyeing approval for its second cultivated chicken product, which is expected this year.