Vow - Mammoth Meatball (case study)

Prehistoric meat doesn’t sound all that appetising, but it certainly is attention-grabbing. And that’s why Australian cultured meat startup Vow decided to turn the mammoth into a meatball. This audacious PR campaign pushes the boundaries of what is scientifically possible, exactly the type of limit-testing creativity that deserves to be celebrated. To cook up the meatball, scientists recreated the DNA of the extinct creature, filling any gaps with fragments of DNA from the African elephant. This proved how Vow’s products (grown from the cells of animals) are wildly different from plant-based meat alternatives like Impossible or Beyond Meat (a common misconception). While people couldn’t sample the Mammoth Meatball (for fear of uh, death), it acted as a product demo by concretising a complex scientific process. “Very few consumers know what cultured meat actually is“ said James Ryall, Vow’s chief scientific officer. “Getting a story about cultured meat into mainstream media is dif