On 6 October 2026 the FSANZ Board approved application A1341, which permits cell-cultured duck biomass as a food ingredient in Australia and New Zealand. FSANZ published the decision seven days later, on 13 October. The product is not yet legally on sale. The next step belongs to food ministers, and the only completed precedent says that step, plus gazettal, takes about 70 days.
This is the follow-up to our September analysis of why the second cell-cultured application ran a lighter procedure. That piece ended with the Board decision unpublished. It is now published, and it changes three of the things we said we would watch.
What the Board decided, and what FSANZ has not yet said
FSANZ’s communique is short. It says the Board “approved Application A1341 to permit cell-cultured duck biomass to be used as a food ingredient”, that the biomass is “produced from cells derived from Pekin duck”, and that it is intended for “products such as ‘cell-cultured foie gras’ and ‘cell-cultured duck pâté’”. The Board was “satisfied that the available scientific evidence supports the safety of the approved food at the assessed levels of consumption.”
It then says: “The approval includes conditions to support food safety, regulatory compliance and informed consumer choice.” It does not list them. Neither the communique, the notification circular nor the application page, as we read them on 13 October, states the conditions.
The applicant is not named on FSANZ’s pages. Food Safety Magazine names it as Suprême SAS, trading as Gourmey. Our earlier piece used the same attribution, and Green Queen reports that Gourmey’s duck dossier now sits inside Parima, the company formed when Gourmey acquired Vital Meat.
The conditions we can read are the consultation draft
The most specific text available is the draft variation FSANZ attached to its 24 June 2026 call for submissions. It is a proposal, and the final approval report was not retrievable when we checked. Treat everything in this section as “what was consulted on”, not “what was approved”.
| Item | Draft text |
|---|---|
| Cell line | 8516-Duck-DP, listed in Schedule 25A as an assessed cell line |
| Specification (Schedule 3) | protein “not less than 10% (70% on a dry basis)”; moisture “not less than 80%”; ash “not more than 1.7%”; fat “not more than 1.8%”; carbohydrates “not more than 0.1%” |
| Sale (S25A-5A) | “Cell-cultured duck must not be a food for retail sale.” A food for retail sale “may have cell-cultured duck as an ingredient.” |
| Labelling (S25A-5B) | the label “must not contain the phrase ‘poultry meat’”; the word “meat” only alongside the cell-cultured wording required by Standard 1.5.4; the generic ingredient-name exemption at 1.2.4-4(b)(iii) “does not apply” |
| Scope of assessment | “FSANZ’s assessment did not consider additional processing of the harvested cells.” |
FSANZ’s call for submissions also notes that the applicant requested no labelling changes, so the proposed labelling conditions mirror those applied to cell-cultured quail. The draft’s other published limits include Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella spp. absent in 25 g.
Practical consequence: the draft makes the duck biomass a business-to-business ingredient. A retailer cannot sell the biomass itself, but can sell a pâté containing it, under a label that cannot say “poultry meat” and cannot use a generic ingredient name. A formulator planning a product should design the label around those constraints now, and then check the final approval report for any change from the draft.
Approval is not permission to sell
The notification circular dated 13 October says: “FSANZ has approved variations arising from the following application on 6 October 2026.” It adds that the Food Ministers’ Meeting has 60 days either to request a review or to inform FSANZ that it does not intend to. The circular does not state the day that 60-day period starts.
On the first cell-cultured approval, FSANZ’s own wording was the same: the process “now moves on to food ministers, who have 60 days to consider the FSANZ decision.” We can lay the two cases side by side. The A1269 gazettal date (18 June 2025) is from our earlier piece, where it is sourced to FSANZ’s A1269 application page.
| A1269 cultured quail | A1341 cell-cultured duck | |
|---|---|---|
| Board approval | 9 April 2025 | 6 October 2026 |
| Decision published | 9 April 2025 | 13 October 2026 |
| 60 days counted from Board approval | 8 June 2025 | 5 December 2026 |
| Gazettal | 18 June 2025 (70 days after Board) | Not yet |
| Gazettal if the same 70-day gap holds | n/a | 15 December 2026 |
Two caveats. First, the day counts are our arithmetic from the Board date, not FSANZ’s stated deadlines, because FSANZ does not publish the date on which the ministerial clock starts. If it starts when FSANZ notified ministers, which would be on or after 6 October, the end date could be later. Second, one precedent is one data point. A December gazettal is the most the record supports as a planning case, not a forecast.
Practical consequence: any launch plan keyed to “approved in October” is keyed to the wrong event. The earliest legal sale in Australia and New Zealand is after gazettal, which on the only precedent is mid-December at the soonest, and ministers can still ask for a review.
What changed from our September watch list
Our September piece set four things to watch. Two have resolved.
- “Whether A1341 receives a Board decision before 31 December 2026.” It did, on 6 October.
- The earliest gazettal. We wrote that an announcement on 8 September would imply gazettal around 7 November 2026. The decision came a month later than that scenario, so the corresponding earliest date on the same arithmetic is mid-December, not early November.
The September communique explains one cause of the timing that we did not have then. It says food ministers “requested A1341” be “given in-session consideration”, and that to accommodate that request “while also meeting its statutory timeframes” the Board held its discussion “at an extraordinary meeting” on 6 October. An extraordinary meeting is a scheduling device, not a signal about the evidence: the same communique says the Board’s preliminary discussions “supported in-principle” the proposed approaches.
The decision against earlier forecasts
Trade press had given dates. In October 2025 Green Queen reported FSANZ’s indicative timeline as a Board decision and ministerial discussion in June 2026, with FSANZ pointing to late August 2026 for a decision while noting that this was not fixed. In April 2026 Green Queen repeated that FSANZ had set August 2026 as a potential clearance date. The decision came on 6 October.
Measured from the application, which Green Queen reports Parima submitted in August 2025, the Board decision came about 14 months later, by our count. FSANZ also gave a shorter route: the application ran FSANZ’s general procedure with one consultation round, which Green Queen describes as faster and about A$40,000 cheaper than the major procedure. That A$40,000 figure comes from the trade press report, not from FSANZ, and we have not verified it against the Application Handbook.
Practical consequence: treat a regulator’s “indicative” date as a floor and the published decision as the event. Between the October 2025 forecast and the October 2026 decision, the forecast moved by roughly four months against the June 2026 date and about five weeks against the August window.
One company, several clocks
Gourmey filed in five markets in July 2024: the EU, Singapore, the US, the UK and Switzerland, according to the FEASTS consortium and European Biotechnology reporting. What the public record shows for the duck today is uneven.
| Market | Status in the sources we read |
|---|---|
| Singapore | Approved. Green Queen reported it on 15 April 2026 as the fourth cultivated meat product cleared in Singapore and Parima’s second approval there |
| Australia and New Zealand | Board approval 6 October 2026; ministerial window open; not gazetted |
| UK | European Biotechnology reported on 10 July 2025 that the FSA had formally accepted the application; no later outcome found |
| EU | In July 2025 European Biotechnology said a decision was anticipated by January 2026, on an 18-month average; we found no outcome |
| US and Switzerland | Filed in 2024 per the same reports; no outcome found in the sources we read |
The through-line is sequencing. A product filed on one day in five markets has now cleared in one, is mid-process in a second, and is unresolved in the rest in our sources, on timelines the company itself did not control. The cost figures that Singapore coverage quotes, including a CEO claim that “below $5/kg is achievable”, are discussed in our piece on four incompatible cost figures for the same duck. Approval does not settle any of them.
The counter-argument
The strongest objection is that the 70-day comparison is a coincidence of one case. Ministerial review is a right, not a routine, and gazettal depends on administrative scheduling that may differ between April and December. That is fair, and it is why we present December as a planning case.
A second objection says the distinction between “Board approval” and “legal sale” matters little in practice, since a product with a Board approval and no ministerial request will be gazetted. The risk is asymmetric. If ministers request a review, the date moves by an amount nobody has published. The same gap between clearance and commercial availability appears in Aleph Farms’ two approvals with no production line, where the missing piece was capacity rather than gazettal.
What we could not establish
- The final conditions of approval. The communique says conditions exist and does not list them. We could not retrieve the approval report. Everything in the conditions table is the consultation draft.
- The start date of the ministers’ 60 days. The circular gives the length, not the start. The 5 December and 15 December dates are our arithmetic from 6 October.
- Whether food ministers reviewed the A1269 decision. The 70-day gap is inferred from gazettal occurring after the Board approval; we found no published statement that no review was requested.
- The applicant’s legal identity on FSANZ’s own pages. FSANZ’s pages do not name it. We rely on Food Safety Magazine for Suprême SAS trading as Gourmey, and on Green Queen for the Parima relationship.
- The outcome of the EU, UK, US and Switzerland filings. We found no source reporting a decision, and absence from our search is not evidence that none exists.
- The A$40,000 saving between procedures. It is a trade-press figure we did not verify.
- Why the decision followed the August window by about five weeks. FSANZ’s September communique attributes the extraordinary meeting to the ministers’ in-session request; it does not say the evidence assessment was the cause of timing, and we have not inferred one.
What to watch
- The A1341 approval report. Whether the final conditions match the draft on retail sale and the “poultry meat” restriction.
- A gazettal notice for A1341 by 15 December 2026. Later than that would be the first evidence that the A1269 gap does not carry over.
- Any food ministers’ request for a review. Either outcome is public on FSANZ’s circulars.
- FSANZ application A1366, a Rhizomucor pusillus mycelium novel food accepted on 17 September 2026 per Notification Circular 415-26, whose consultation is still to be notified. It is not cell-cultured meat, but it shows what else is entering the queue behind this decision.