logo
‘World's first' lab-grown meat for pets launches in the UK

‘World's first' lab-grown meat for pets launches in the UK

CNN12-02-2025

In what's been called a world first, consumers in the UK are now able to buy a pet treat made with lab-grown meat.
The treat contains plant-based ingredients and 4% chicken meat cultivated in a lab by Meatly, a London-based startup that last year became the first company in the world to get regulatory approval for this type of meat to be used in pet food.
Lab-grown or cultivated meat is made by harvesting a tiny sample of animals cells — from a chicken egg, in this case — and then culturing them in a steel tank called a bioreactor, along with water and nutrients. In a few weeks, a protein mass is produced with a much smaller environmental impact than growing a live animal, in terms of land and water use, as well as carbon emissions — and without having to kill an actual chicken.
'It's the first time ever a consumer has been able to buy a product made from cultivated meat for their pet, and it's the first time in Europe that a consumer has been able to buy cultivated meat full stop, whether for humans or animals,' says Owen Ensor, who founded Meatly in 2022.
'Our intention was always to do cultivated meat for pet food. We recognized that there was a huge burning need in the pet world, with 20% of meat globally being eaten by our pets. The average Labrador eats more meat than its owner,' he added.
For now, the treat — called 'Chick Bites' and produced in collaboration with pet food brand The Pack — is in limited release and only available in one London outlet of Pets at Home, a chain that operates 457 stores in the UK and was an early investor in Meatly. It costs £3.49 ($4.30) for 50 grams.
In recent years, meat alternatives have been growing in popularity, but unlike plant-based products, which use protein such as soy or peas to mimic real meat, and products that use the fermentation of microbes like fungi or yeasts to make the protein, cultivated meat is not yet widely available.
Only a handful of countries have approved the sale of lab-grown meat, including Singapore, in 2020, the United States, in 2023, and Israel in 2024. However, two US states — Florida and Alabama — have since banned cultivated meat, and none is currently available for sale in the country. In 2023, Italy became the first country to ban the sale of lab-grown meat, although the measure has since been challenged by the European Union.
Beyond the issues of regulatory approval and consumer acceptance, cultivated meat is still very expensive to make. 'Currently we're about £30 (about $37) per kilogram of the chicken that we're producing, and we'd want to be between £5 and £10 (between $6.20 and $12.40),' says Ensor. 'Our process is still quite expensive, but we've made incredible progress bringing the cost down, particularly of the nutrients we are feeding the chicken cells with. Those are often the most expensive component, and we've brought those down from what has been £700 (about $867) per liter to what is currently 26 pence per liter (about 32 cents). We have made this more cost efficient by orders of thousands in the last two years and are continuing on that journey.'
Meatly's process involves taking 'a single sample of cells from one chicken egg one time,' Ensor explains, which is sufficient to create 'an infinite amount of meat forever more.' The cells are fed with a mix of amino acids, vitamins and minerals for about a week, after which the meat is ready and has the consistency of 'chicken pâté.'
Meat made this way is nutritionally equivalent to the real thing, he adds, but free of steroids, hormones or antibiotics. Depending on the methods used in traditional animal agriculture, Ensor says it uses 50 to 60% less land, 30 to 40% less water, and creates about 40% fewer CO2 emissions.
However, one of the biggest challenges for cultured meat companies is scaling up to be able to make enough product for a widespread commercial launch. Ensor says that Meatly currently uses 50-liter (13-gallon) bioreactors to grow its cells, but to be able to scale up production, it's planning to move to a new facility that will employ 20,000-liter (5,200-gallon) bioreactors instead.
In product tests with dogs, he says the treat was enthusiastically received. 'Many of them preferred it to their baseline diet,' he says.
Pet owners — who are technically barred from trying the product even if they wanted to, because it is not approved for human consumption — have also responded positively, Ensor adds. 'Once you start explaining that the process is very similar to making beer and that is dramatically more sustainable (than conventional meat production), that we've done a lot of safety testing and have regular engagements with the regulators to make sure our process adheres to all of the necessary rules, people are just excited about it. A lot of people who have pets are animal lovers and want to find a more sustainable and kind way of feeding their pets.'
According to Tuck Seng Wong, a professor of biomanufacturing at the University of Sheffield, in the UK, and the deputy director of the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre, who's not involved with Meatly, cultivated meat technology has advanced significantly and is now comparable in maturity to other alternative protein technologies, such as fermentation and insect cultivation. 'Pet food accounts for up to a quarter of total meat consumption,' he says. 'Therefore, developing an alternative method for pet food production that ensures food safety while preserving the essential nutrients pets require marks a significant milestone.'
As the technology continues to advance, he adds, the culture media used for growing animal cells will become increasingly cost-effective and environmentally sustainable. 'Using cultured meat for pet food is a logical choice, provided it meets a price point acceptable to consumers while ensuring high food safety standards and maintaining, or even enhancing, the essential nutritional value for pets.'
Christopher Bryant, a psychologist and honorary research fellow at the University of Bath, who studies consumer acceptance of alternative meat, and is also not involved with Meatly, says that lab-grown meat still has to win over consumers. 'There's a lot of evidence that consumer acceptance of cultivated meat is strongly associated with familiarity,' he adds. 'Once a product becomes more familiar in any form, it will tend to be viewed as more normal, and therefore will tend to be more accepted.'
After making pet food, which it hopes will help consumers familiarize with lab-grown meat, Meatly aims to make cultured protein for people, too. 'The UK Food Standards Agency is currently undergoing a two-year project to set out the approval process for cultivated meat,' Ensor says.
'We hope to be part of that process, and everything in our production is safe for humans, it's just we don't have the regulatory pathway yet. But once that's established, we would love to bring sustainable, healthy and kind meat to people as well.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Boss of London ad champion quits after losing crown to French rival
Boss of London ad champion quits after losing crown to French rival

Yahoo

time27 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Boss of London ad champion quits after losing crown to French rival

The boss of WPP is to step down months after the British advertising behemoth lost its crown to a French rival. Mark Read will leave after more than three decades at WPP, including seven years as chief executive. He will continue in the role until the end of the year while the board searches for his successor. Mr Read's departure, though long-expected in the industry, comes at a turbulent time for WPP. The London-based group, which employs around 110,000 people worldwide, last year lost its title as the world's largest ad company by revenues to French rival Publicis. Meanwhile, its two other largest rivals – Omnicom and Interpublic – have agreed to merge in a $30bn (£22bn) deal that will further erode WPP's dominance. The British company is also grappling with industry-wide turmoil sparked by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which threatens to upend the work of ad agencies. This has compounded the challenge posed by tech giant such as Google and Meta, which have grown their share of the advertising market in a direct threat to traditional holding groups. Mr Read's tenure has been dominated by efforts to simplify WPP, which had ballooned into a sprawling network of companies under his predecessor Sir Martin Sorrell, who left the company he founded following allegations of misconduct, which he has always denied. As chief executive, Mr Read oversaw the merging of a number of agencies while selling off some non-core businesses, including the £2.5bn sale of a 60pc stake in market research group Kantar. More recently, the ad boss has also vowed to invest heavily in AI, pumping £300m into the technology this year and investing in generative AI startup Stability AI. However, WPP's growth has ground to a halt in recent years and the company's share price has more than halved during Mr Read's tenure, pushing its market value below £6bn. Shares fell a further 2pc after his departure was announced. Alex DeGroote, a media analyst, said: 'The company is much simpler today than it was when he came on board as chief executive.' But he added: 'There's just a feeling of the company having lost a lot of ground to the likes of Publicis, so I can't honestly say that he will be remembered as having delivered immense shareholder value.' Mr Read's future has been in doubt since Philip Jansen, the former BT boss, was appointed as WPP chairman at the beginning of the year. Mr Jansen said Mr Read had 'played a central role in transforming the company into a world leader in modern marketing services'. Mr Read said: 'After seven years in the role, and with the foundations in place for WPP's continued success, I feel it is the right time to hand over the leadership of this amazing company. 'I am excited to explore the next chapter in my life and can only thank all the brilliant people I have been lucky enough to work with over the last 30 years, and who have made possible the enormous progress we have achieved together.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren pays nearly $2.3M for Lake Forest mansion
Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren pays nearly $2.3M for Lake Forest mansion

Chicago Tribune

time30 minutes ago

  • Chicago Tribune

Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren pays nearly $2.3M for Lake Forest mansion

In a move sure to lend further credence to the view that the Chicago Bears will build a new stadium in Arlington Heights, Kevin Warren, the team's president and CEO, in May paid $2.25 million for a five-bedroom, 8,725-square-foot shingle-style mansion in Lake Forest. Warren, 61, became the Bears' president and CEO in January 2023 after serving for more than three years as the commissioner of the Rosemont-based Big Ten conference. During his time overseeing the Big Ten, Warren first rented a 21st-floor condo in a building on Lake Shore Drive in Streeterville, and then in 2023, he and his wife, Greta, paid $1.75 million for a three-bedroom, 2,547-square-foot condominium on the 13th floor of the same high-rise. Since June 2021, the Bears have been known to be considering locations for a new stadium, including building a new arena in Arlington Heights on the 326-acre site of the former Arlington Park racetrack — land that the team purchased in 2023. Warren soon emerged as an enthusiastic proponent of the idea of a new stadium on Chicago's lakefront. In April, Warren told reporters that the team had shifted from solely pursuing building a new stadium downtown to considering both downtown and Arlington Heights. 'The focus now is both downtown and Arlington Heights,' Warren said in April. 'One thing I have said before is that these are not linear processes or projects. They take time.' Then, in May, the Tribune broke the news that the team's focus had moved once again, this time to Arlington Heights exclusively. Warren's decision to buy a suburban home is sure to spark speculation that the team now is near-certain to build in Arlington Heights, although Warren's new house also is close to the Bears' Halas Hall headquarters and training complex in Lake Forest. The house Warren purchased has a wraparound deck, a new cedar shake roof, a great room with a 19-foot alder wood ceiling and a Lannon stone fireplace, and a kitchen with high-end appliances, a center island and a breakfast bar. Other features include a private office with a fireplace and and a first-floor primary bedroom suite with a bathroom that has dual vanities and heated stone floors. Downstairs, the lower level has a family room opening to a stone patio, a guest bedroom suite and an exercise room. With Warren now having purchased a place in the northern suburbs, he joins several of his colleagues, including Bears general manager Ryan Poles, who paid $2.077 million in 2023 for a 5,200-square-foot house in Lincolnshire. Recently hired head coach Ben Johnson is not known to have bought a house here yet. The sellers lost money on the Lake Forest mansion. They paid $2.39 million for it in 2015, and they first listed it in 2023 for $2.495 million. They cut their asking price in April 2024 to $2.4 million, and they signed a deal in April with Warren, who closed on the purchase in May through an opaque land trust that masks his identity. The mansion had a $35,839 property tax bill in the 2024 tax year. It also has $295-a-month homeowners association dues. Real estate agent Annie Royster Lenzke, who represented Warren in his purchase, did not respond to a request for comment. Her colleague Dawn McKenna also did not respond to a request for comment.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store