LONDON—Would you feed your pets meat grown in a lab?
The world’s first cat food made with lab-grown chicken is preparing to launch in the US later this year.
Meatly, the London-based startup, has created cruelty-free, fake chicken cat food grown from a single fertilized egg. It will be available to buy first in UK Pets and Home stores later this summer as part of their sustainable initiative.
Speaking from his bijou garden in North London with his cats purring around him, Owen Ensor, the co-founder and chief executive, said, “It’s very exciting to see the first cans of cultivated food of the pet that flew off the production line. We have an R&D partnership with a large pet-food manufacturer in America and are currently going through regulatory hurdles. The model we have in the UK with retailer relationships works well and manufacturer, so ideally we would try to replicate that with someone like PetSmart and Petco.”
A 150g (5oz) can of Meatly’s cultivated-chicken cat food costs around £1 ($1.25). Cultured meat, also known as cell-based or clean meat, is made by culturing animal cells in a giant stainless steel tank, similar to brewing beer. The company’s scientists obtained “a sample of cells from a chicken egg” and grew them into a product that is biologically indistinguishable from the flesh of a killed bird. It’s also free of hormones, steroids and antibiotics—all things commonly found in meat, organic or otherwise.
“Nobody died for this. We didn’t have to raise and kill animals,” said Ensor, “We use less water and land resources, less greenhouse emissions and we don’t destroy rainforests, pollute rivers and the ocean. We can avoid all those issues while still providing healthier meat that’s kinder.”
Ensor, a relatively new convert to veganism, tried the first product himself, which he said “tastes like chicken.” He also tried the cultured-chicken dish on his own two rescue ginger tabbies, Lamu and Zanzi, “who love it.”
Raised in Edinburgh, Ensor, 35, started out in consulting before moving into the bio-tech world. “I wanted to work in developing countries and for a social enterprise because I thought it was an interesting mix of capitalist intentions and social impact. That’s how I found Sanargy in Kenya, creating a zero-waste system by using organic waste to feed the insects we sell as animal feed. At the same time, after watching Cowspiracy, [my wife] Harriet and I became vegan. I started asking, ‘Do I want to breed insects and sell them as chicken feed?’ Even if it’s part of this great zero-waste system. When we returned to the UK, I did some work with multinationals on their plant-based food strategies and I became interested in the world of food because it was real.
Reflecting the growing trend for socially conscious pet ‘parents’ to feed their companion animals a veggie diet, there is a wide range of plant and potato based products available such as Wild Earth based in California and Bramble Pets of New York. Animal lovers, especially vegans and vegetarians, wrestle with the conflict between their pet’s natural diets and their ethical stance on animal exploitation and the environmental degradation of meat production. Although omnivorous dogs thrive on balanced plant-rich diets and may even live longer than meat-eating dogs, this is completely inappropriate and harmful for cats who must remain carnivores. This is why Meatly’s first product is for cats, “because there is no credible substitute without meat. Cats cannot make taurine, and the only way they can get it is from animal protein sources.
Meatly is also planning a product for dogs “because a lot of people don’t want to feed their dogs plant food.” The goal is to create a new generation of cat and dog food that does not rely on farmed animals, as a compassionate, more environmentally friendly alternative to killing billions of animals and destroying the planet to meet demand.
Cultivated-meat pet food can have profound ethical and environmental benefits. Petcare giants like Nestle Global that make low-quality fare like Purina, Friskies and Fancy Feast are looking at lab-grown meat and meat-free options as a market opportunity. Other pet-food companies are wary of industry disruption or skeptical about the long-term health effects of these alternative protein sources.
“Clean meat makes sense in every way, but the question is whether it will be safe for our cats and dogs,” said Lorenzo Capellino, CEO of Almo Nature, a premium human-grade cat and dog food that is unique among pet-food brands in that it donates 100 percent of its profits to European animal shelters and wildlife projects. “Almo Nature has decided to follow the research very closely, albeit with an absolute line of caution. Pet food may be one of the first places to test these proteins, but we will only use those these ingredients when there is sufficient evidence of their suitability to meet the nutritional needs of dogs and cats.”
“I think once we prove it’s safe and commercially viable, the winds of change will come,” Ensor said. “One of the questions I get is ‘what is it, what does it look like?’ Until people see and experience something new, it’s a bit difficult. People really care about their animal companions and what’s best for them, so we have to provide that reassurance.”
Globally, the pet-food industry is booming and pets currently account for a fifth of the world’s meat consumption. The industry’s carbon footprint could get heavier in the coming years, as the number of companion animals grows. Through 2026, Meatly estimates that the market is set to grow seven percent a year, representing approximately $150 billion. “About 40 percent of the world’s pet food is sold in the US, so it’s a huge market but the quality can be very poor. There are many recalls, animals die and people die from contamination.”
Meatly is among several other startups—such as BioCraft Pet Nutrition and Bond Pet Foods in the US and Bene and Hill’s Nutrition in Europe—in an effort to take animal farming out of the equation by using cell-cultured meat , creating a healthier, more sustainable option for the world’s pets.
If all cats and dogs in the US alone switched to cultivated-meat or plant-based protein two billion pets and billions of aquatic animals could be saved from slaughter. Most pet food is a by-product of the meat industry and most of it comes from farm animals that are ‘dead, sick, dying, disabled’—the 4Ds as the industry knows them—all of which makes it unfit for human consumption. “That’s mostly in the US, less happens in the UK,” Ensor points out. “But with increasing demand, that is changing. Almost 50 percent of domestic animal meat can be fed to humans, so companion animals already compete in the human food chain.
There is higher welfare pet food, but it is very expensive and rare, especially in the US, where 99 percent of the meat comes from farmed animals that live short, brutal lives under harsh conditions. those conditions. However, more than 30 percent of farmed animals are made into pet food, so in effect the meat industry is supported and profited by pet food. In fact, the largest American corporate slaughterhouses such as Tyson and Cargill Foods own many pet-food brands as a way to recycle dead, sick and dying farm animals and so-called ‘waste’ ‘ of corpses—nails, beaks, bones, blood, intestines and other undesirable body parts. Disturbingly, even euthanized cats and dogs are turned into pet food. Recently, several American pet foods issued recalls after traces of pentobarbital, a sedative commonly used to euthanize cats, dogs and horses, were detected in their products.
When cultured meat for companion animals is sold on an industrial scale, it will have a huge impact on many levels, especially for farm animals. Ensor believes that clean meat will not only change the way we feed our cats and dogs but is also a step towards more humane, sustainable, safer and healthier alternatives to conventional options. “I think what’s great is that we’re scratching the surface of what’s possible.”
