Vow de-extincts the woolly mammoth by turning its DNA into a meatball

Australia’s first cell-based meat company, Vow, has taken cultured meat to a whole new level — the ancient past. The Aussie startup just announced the resurrection of the woolly mammoth… in meatball form.

Vow achieved this by combining the soft cells of the woolly mammoth — which has been extinct for 5000 years — with fragments of DNA from an African elephant. It revealed the meatball at the Nemo Science Museum in the Netherlands this week as part of Amsterdam’s Food Futurism event.

Cultured meat is at the heart of Vow, which aims to replace traditional animal farming with cell-based meat. Launched in 2019, Vow is now creating cultured meat from over 50 species.

Speaking to SmartCompany in late 2022, co-founder and CEO of Vow, George Peppou, admitted that each species has its own challenges — but that whole cuts of meat are the most difficult to cultivate.

Still, its idealism is spreading. Back in November, the company raised a whopping $73 million in Series A to help further its vision for the planet.

At the time it also announced that it was bringing cultured meat to fine dining with a sub-brand called Morsel. It also recently unveiled ‘the world’s rarest dumpling’ in Austin, Texas. It consisted of cultured Japanese quail and was served to sixty lucky patrons as part of SXSW.

The woolly mammoth meatball is its latest ‘drop’ which aims to be experimental with the future of food. And in this case, inject the past into it.

“We created a meatball made of mammoth cells and gifted it to the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in the Netherlands. The mammoth is a gigantic symbol of loss. We hope our meatball will resurrect conversations about meat and climate change,” Vow said in a statement.

If you were hoping to have a taste of one, we have bad news for you. It’s not yet ready for human consumption. This was really more of a concept piece to highlight the importance of changing our eating habits but pointing to something we’ve already lost — the woolly mammoth.

The project was led by Bas Korsten, chief creative officer at the global creative agency Wunderman Thompson. Korsten is also known for being the initiator of  The Next Rembrandt. Unveiled in 2016, it was a 3D-printed painting that was the result of AI learning from the works of Rembrandt.

Vow is also yet to have retail products on the shelf, but we’ve been assured that the first cultured meat it releases to the public is very good.

It’s probably not going to be the mammoth meatball, though.