31 Jul 2024 UK approve lab-grown meat, starting with pet food

The UK is the first European country to approve lab-grown meat, a move contrary to many countries’ anti stance….

Lab-grown pet food is to hit UK shelves as Britain becomes the first country in Europe to approve cultivated meat.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have approved the product from the company Meatly. a British company that grows meat from chicken cells for pet food. Its product, which will begin feeding trials in August, arrives at a time when the worldwide market for pet food is expected to grow 5 percent this year to $151-billion, according to the research firm Statista.

It is thought there will be demand for cultivated pet food, as animal lovers face a dilemma about feeding their pets meat from slaughtered livestock.

Research suggests the pet food industry has a climate impact similar to that of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world. A study by the University of Winchester found that 50% of surveyed pet owners would feed their pets cultivated meat, while 32% would eat it themselves.

The Meatly product is cultivated chicken. It is made by taking a small sample from a chicken egg, cultivating it with vitamins and amino acids in a lab, then growing cells in a container similar to those in which beer is fermented. The result is a paté-like paste.

Meatly says it plans to launch the first samples of its commercially available pet food this year, and will then focus on cost reduction and starting to scale production to reach industrial volumes within the next three years. The cost reductions could be done by mixing the meat with vegetables, as is done with other pet foods containing costly animal products.

Biotech battles

The move, which became an opportunity for entrepreneurs after Britain’s split from the more-regulated European Union, is a victory for the biotech industry, which the British government hopes to build into a superpower.

But lab-grown meat and other alternative proteins (along with oat, soy and almond milks) have become a political football in both Europe and the US.

Italy, a gastronomic tinderbox, banned the sale of cell-cultivated meat last year, as right-wing lawmakers argued that they were protecting the country’s farmers and national heritage. France is trying to police the language around lab-grown meat, banning what it calls “foodstuffs containing vegetable proteins” from being labelled “filet” or “steak,” among others; Austria and Hungary are holding similar debates.

In the US, lab-grown/cultivated meat has become a temperature check for both the right and the left. Florida banned the food in May after two California companies received approval to start selling their meat last year.

To read more, click here: The Guardian, and here: NYT

Related reading:

Cultivated-meat firms may have found a new target market

The noise surrounding cultivated or lab-grown meat is increasing all the time but the level of activity involving the end product far from matches the hype.