UK Approves Lab-Grown Meat in Pet Food

The UK has become the first country in Europe to approve lab-grown meat. The authorization will specifically allow the use of cultivated chicken, or meat grown from the cells of an egg sample, in a new pet food made by the London-based startup Meatly.

Formerly known as Good Dog Food, Meatly received regulatory approval from the country’s Food Standards Agency (FSA), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).

To make the pet food, Meatly starts by extracting cells from a chicken egg sample. Then, in a lab setting, the Meatly team tends to the cells, giving them the nutrients necessary to develop meat. Meatly described the process as similar to making yogurt or beer, ultimately leading to a non-GMO meat product that requires minimal animal products to make. From there, Meatly collaborates with pet food companies to incorporate its lab-grown chicken into pet food for a more sustainable ingredient.

Pet food has major implications for the environment, since much of pet food is made with meat. As Earth.org reported, pet food is responsible for about 25% to 30% of the environmental impact of meat in the U.S. alone. A 2018 study found that the environmental impact from the diet of each domesticated dog or cat in Japan was nearly equivalent to the dietary environmental impact of one citizen. Yet another study determined that globally, an amount of land around double the size of the UK is used every year to make dry food for pets.

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“Our pets consume huge amounts of meat every day and so this development can play a crucial part in reducing the emissions, resource consumption, and animal suffering caused by traditional meat production,” Jim Mellon, founder of Agronomics, an investor in Meatly, said in a press release.

As The Grocer reported, pet food sales in the UK are taking off, recently exceeding 29 billion euros (around $31.7 billion). The increasing demand can put more pressure on the environment as it takes more land to raise livestock and food for the livestock.

Meatly hopes to help alleviate this pressure with its cultivated meat, which can be made using cells from just one fertilized egg. As The Guardian reported, Meatly is currently operating on an investment of 3.5 million pounds (about $4.55 million) and plans to raise another 5 million pounds (about $6.5 million) in its next round of fundraising.

With these investments, Meatly plans to scale its operations, first by making its cultivated meat available in commercially available pet food in the UK this year. It will continue scaling over the next three years while also working to reduce costs, including by adding vegetables to the cultivated meat, The Guardian reported.

“It is incredibly exciting to see the first ever cans of cultivated pet food fly off the production line,” Owen Ensor, co-founder and CEO of Meatly, said in a press release. “This is a major milestone for cultivated meat globally and shows that we are ready to sell product. As demand continues to grow, with pet food already accounting for 20% of meat produced globally, so too does the industry’s environmental impact. Cultivated meat gives pet parents an easy choice — high quality, tasty, nutritious, and sustainable pet food.”

Meatly noted on its website that it will be at least another year or two before its product comes to North America.