The UK will start feeding lab-grown meat to pets this year

The UK is now the first European country to green-light the sale of lab-grown meat, but with pets instead of human consumers as its first guinea pigs.

The UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs granted London-based startup Meatly regulatory approval to produce lab-grown pet food, which described the clearance as a “huge leap forward for the cultivated meat industry.”

“Pet parents are crying out for a better way to feed their cats and dogs meat,” Meatly CEO Owen Ensor said in a statement, pitching that the company’s cultivated pet food would allow them to do so “in a way that is kinder to our planet and other animals.”

Meatly says it plans to launch commercial samples of its first pet food product grown from chicken cells this year, before focusing on reducing costs and scaling to industrial production volumes within the next three years. 

It’s typically very expensive and time-consuming to produce lab-grown meat. Efforts to address these issues have been fueled by growing concerns about the environmental impact of raising livestock, with research suggesting the pet food industry alone has a climate impact similar to that of Mozambique or the Philippines.

While cultivated meat products have been approved for human consumption in Singapore, Israel, and most of the US, the industry has been hindered by scaling issues and political scrutiny.

It’ll likely take years for cultivated meat to make a meaningful impact on the wider agriculture industry, and when Meatly’s product hits the shelves, it probably won’t come cheap. Would you be more inclined to pay a premium knowing the company says its final lab-grown chicken product is “free from GMOs”?