So, it seems that our dogs are the, er, guinea pigs for the first cultivated meats to hit the UK.
“Just two years ago this felt like a moon shot,” said Owen Ensor, founding CEO of Meatly. “Today we take off. It’s a giant leap forward – toward a significant market for meat which is healthy, sustainable and kind to our planet and other animals.”
‘Meatly Chicken’ uses a single sample of cells taken from one chicken egg. These are provided with “all the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids the cells need to grow big and strong, until they become delicious meat,” the website explains. “We nurture these cells in a container that controls things like temperature and acidity, just the same as making yoghurt or beer.”
The meat is then combined with plant-based ingredients into a treat for dogs, made by vegan pet food startup The Pack. Only 750 packs of the ‘Chick Bites’ are available in a limited run at Pets At Home (which is an investor in Meatly). However, Meatly says through this process “enough cultivated meat can be produced to feed pets forever”.
Barking up the right tree
Hyperbole has long been a part of this nascent sub-category of so-called novel foods. They are pitched as a silver bullet – meat without the ethical and environmental baggage, but those approved for human consumption are still like gold dust. Singapore, the US and Israel have all approved some products; India and The Netherlands have held tastings. The UK has its trial dog treats.
Think about it and this market makes perfect sense for such a product. Research shows we are still more than a little nervous about cell-based products. In 2012, 19 per cent said they’d be willing to try cultivated meat; last year the figure was 26 per cent, according to YouGov. Awareness of climate change and animal welfare are driving interest.
Pet food offers perhaps a safe, sustainable option for the eco-conscious consumer who can’t quite bring themselves to eat cultured meat. Ensor told Wicked Leeks that their cultivated meat “will not lead to any downstream pollution issues, which is of huge concern when it comes to factory farms and river pollution in places such as the UK, where nutrient run-off is killing our rivers.”
People are already buying into food for their four-legged friends that contains insect protein (another alternative protein most of us are not that keen on), all in the name of ethics and an environmental conscience, so why not chicken cells ‘brewed’ in a bioreactor? There are no fly fatalities either.
“Younger folks are having fewer kids. Instead, they are having pets. And they are spending on their furry friends big time,” wrote Sonalie Figueiras, who runs the Green Queen website which tracks the alternative protein market closer than anyone. “We have been seeing some wins in this sector, especially with cultivated meat pet food [from Meatly] and I predict more to come.”
Canine cash cow
The agricultural land used to produce meat and other pet food ingredients is twice as large as the UK The Good Food Institute
There is certainly money to be made in pet food. The UK market is the second largest in the world, behind only the US, and was worth £4.1bn last year, according to the Pet Data Report 2024. We share our homes with 13.5 million dogs, for example, spending £2bn on feeding them. And we care more than ever about what we feed them.
However, this search for premium nutrition for our pets is having “unintended consequences” on our environment”, according to the Good Food Institute, a think tank supporting development of alternative proteins. Meat makes up almost half the 10.5 million tonnes of pet food sold in Europe each year, from a mix of meat and animal by-products such as offal and blood.
“Globally, the agricultural land used to produce meat and other pet food ingredients is twice as large as the UK,” GFI has noted. “And as the trend towards premium brands continues, those impacts could grow. Premium pet food is 3.3 times worse for the climate than market-leading cat food and 2.3 times worse than market-leading dog food.” This is due to the higher quantity of meat used in premium products – which poses an ethical quandary – how to offset meatier products which denote ‘quality’ and may even be less processed, against climate considerations.
Cultivated meat therefore makes for a compelling concept, for consumers, companies and climate activists alike (though questions remain over the climate impact of these meats once scaled significantly). “We’re proving the potential of cultivated meat, and that there is an efficient and cost-effective route to market,” says Ensor at Meatly. “Our team has now managed to reduce the cost of the medium we feed our cells from around £700 to under £1 a litre, and we’re confident we can go further,” he adds. “With just 1 per cent of total global funding in this sector, we’ve created a process that is closing in on price parity.”
Indeed, worth noting is the speed with which Chick Bites have arrived on the market. Various regulators are involved in approvals, including the Food Standards Agency and the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Testing included demonstrating that the cultivated chicken is free from bacteria and viruses, that the nutrients used to grow the cells are safe, and that the final chicken product is safe, nutritious, and free from GMOs, antibiotics, harmful pathogens, heavy metals, and other impurities.
Meatly got the green light late last year. Whether this first commercial product opens the floodgates to more pet products is moot. And, as Katherine Lewis, a researcher at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) notes: let’s not get carried away with cultivated meats and forget about farmers. “This technology could change not just what our pets eat, but what we eat and, crucially who produces it,” she tells Wicked Leeks.
Lewis’s research, focused on what cultivated meat means for farmers, has shown very little discussion, even in the farming press, with farmers on this topic. Having run groups with farmers she suggests lab-meat companies are more likely to succeed if they find common ground with producers. “Conversations about something as important as the future of our food system should happen in the open and allow everyone the chance to have their say,” she added.
Ensor adds that he sees cultivated chicken working alongside farmers “who want to do better, but have their hands tied by the growing demand for meat from us and our pets. By taking the pressure off farmers, we can help farmers de-intensify, and go back to farming in a way which is kinder to the countryside they look after.”
Mis-leading dog owners
Whether it’s our plates on the table or the dog’s bowl on the floor, sustainable food is in demand. Who pays the premium for this remains a hot potato, so companies are currently marketing their ‘better’ pet food products in the same way they’ve enticed us to try more ethical brands.
A report just published by Pets International and Yummypets, a social ‘petwork’ community, detailed the “evolution” in the information provided on pet food labels, for example. One in five people surveyed (in the UK, France, the US and Canada) are not really sure about what they’re feeding their pets. More than half (58%) felt the labels were misleading. “This scepticism about pet food claims may indicate a need for brands to re-evaluate their labelling strategies,” the report noted. “The answer could be in simplifying labelling language.”
The rules about green claims are not confined to the food we eat, so companies will have to be increasingly careful. Terms such as ‘grain-free’, human-grade’, ‘sustainably-sourced’ and ‘natural’ must all be thoroughly evidenced. Better still, companies should be far less ambiguous.
In October, ‘big pet food’ was forced to defend claims that a ‘kibble cartel’ was misleading pet owners. Wild Pack, a ‘raw’ dog food subscription service founded by Georgia Toffolo said companies “can be very creative with their language. Whether they’re referring to powdered carcasses as ‘beef’ or UHT bulking agents as ‘country vegetables’, they’re pretty liberal with their terminology,” Toffolo posted on social media.
Pet food sold as ‘regenerative’ will certainly be one to watch. Mars is one of those to have gone big on its regenerative approach. This is, again, big business: a food industry consultant told Figueiras that while people think of Mars as a chocolate bar company now, in the future it will be a pet food company with some confectionery.
Dogs certainly seem to like the treats Meatly offers: in trials, half the dogs continued licking the bowl after they’d finished their dinner. Will we be as enthusiastic if, or rather when, the first cultivated meat products are approved for human consumption?
My dog eats the same organic meat, wild caught fish and most of the organic vegetables that I eat. I batch cook his meals myself. There is zero chance of me ever feeding him industrially processed rubbish, let alone a product like Meatly. I feel so sorry for the owners who do not know how to feed their much loved animals for a long and healthy life and rely on pet food manufacturers whose only duty is to maximise profits for shareholders.
Reply to Annette_RB:
The effort and care you invest in your animal’s health is commendable. I wish all pet owners did more research into which foods and ingredients are species-appropriate. And yes, the market is saturated with low-quality pet foods produced by an unregulated industry.
However the “wild caught fish” you feed your dog contain PCBs, PFAs, heavy metals and other nasties. Nothing is “pure.”
Also, just because cell-cultured protein involves a process (like making cheese or sourdough) doesn’t mean it’s packed with scary artificial ingredients as found in ultra-processed foods.
Cultured meat is still animal protein, but grown a different way. Just like IVF produces actual children. It’s produced under sterile conditions to protect against pathogens. That makes it arguably safer than butchered or “natural” meat. And more ethical.
“……. insect protein (another alternative protein most of us are not that keen on)….”
People who object to insects as a source of protein generally fall into one of two categories (or maybe both): those who object because of the ‘yuck’ factor at eating creepy-crawlies, and those who will have you believe that there is a sinister global conspiracy to make us all eat insects (but never any explanation why Bill Gates and his co-conspirators want us to do this). I regard the second of these groups as, variously, barking mad, mischievous or malevolent. Although I have more sympathy with the first group, here is a reason why they should perhaps not react so strongly. Do they, for example, eat crabs, lobster, shrimps or prawns? If they do, they are eating animals that belong to the phylum ‘Arthropoda’, the jointed legged invertebrates. Insects are also members of the Arthropods, but usually a little smaller. So, if you eat one, what’s wrong with eating the other?
With regard tocultured meat, bring it on and make more room for nature.
Do you use foetal calf serum in the growth medium for your meat cells? FCS is drained from foetal calves in the abattoir so not as “animal-free” as we like to think. Most cultured meat uses FCS as far as I can see. Look forward to your reply.
Diana: The cultivated cells are derived from chicken eggs.
Hi Ani, Thanks for your reply below. I am not referring to the original cells (from chicken eggs that grow into meat cells) but the growth medium for these cells. It will be in the Materials an Methods part of the academic paper, and to date, I’ve found that all cultivated meat cells need to have foetal calf serum (fcs) as part of their growth medium, or they will not grow. This is my question – is fcs used in making the cultivated meat? Thanks so much for finding out for me.