Fake meat is being introduced into the UK as pet food; they hope to expand the market to humans
The UK has become the first European country to approve the sale of artificial meat for pet food. The regulatory clearance was granted to Meatly, a company developing cultivated meat from animal cells. The initial product will be chicken-based and intended for use in dog food. However, they hope to expand the market and sell their artificial meat to humans.
Artificial meat – also known as in vitro, cultivated, cell-based, clean, cultured, lab-grown or slaughter-free meat – is meat that is grown in a cell culture outside an animal’s body instead of inside, naturally.
On 2 July 2024, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (“APHA”) approved Meatly’s chicken cells cultivated in a laboratory for use in pet food. Regulators cleared the use of chicken cultivated from animal cells, which London-based lab-grown protein company Meatly is planning to sell to manufacturers. The approval marks the first time a lab-grown pet food ingredient has been authorised, globally.
Meatly was founded in 2022 by Owen Ensor and partner Helder Cruz with backing from investor Agronomics, a London-listed biotechnology and synthetic biology venture capitalist company focused on investment opportunities within the field of “cellular agriculture.” In 2023, Meatly secured funding from Pets at Home, the UK’s leading pet care business.
The company plans to sell its product to approved pet food manufacturers, with the first samples expected to hit UK shelves as early as this year. The first pet food to contain Meatly cells will be dog food.
Meatly CEO Owen Ensor, a vegan who has a background in the insect protein business, says that the startup has already shipped some of its chicken cells to pet food manufacturers so they can run their own nutritional tests and trial different formulations of pet food made using Meatly’s cells as an ingredient. Meatly will initially focus on scaling up production to reach industrial volumes over the next three years.
As reported by Wired, the cells that end up in Meatly’s chicken pâté came from commercially available cells sourced from a fertilised chicken egg. The cells are spontaneously immortalised which means that they can duplicate indefinitely, unlike non-immortalised cells which stop growing after a certain number of duplications.
According to Ensor, the finished ingredient is currently costing “double figures” in pounds sterling per kilo, but that is before it is mixed with other ingredients in pet food. “It will be a premium product because the prices are still high,” he says.
There is no explicit information on specific health benefits or risks associated with cultivated meat for pets being reported. They are simply playing on people’s emotions, using the concept of heart-over-head to push this laboratory concoction masquerading as food.
As The Guardian reported: “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.”
And Ensor stated that Meatly’s cultivated pet food will allow owners to feed their cats and dogs meat “in a way that is kinder to our planet and other animals.”
“Pet parents are crying out for a better way to feed their cats and dogs meat,” he said. It is no accident that Ensor uses terms such as “pet parents” to market his product which appeals to the heart and not the mind.
Four Paws – whose vision is a world where humans treat animals with respect, empathy and understanding is promoting artificial meat for animals but insists that this can only be achieved if the whole world is vegan – shows their lack of respect and understanding of animals and animals needs by campaigning for artificial meat for pets because it is of benefit to the environment.
Dogs are carnivores. They share a common ancestry with other carnivores like wolves, jackals and foxes. While dogs can survive on a diet with some plant matter, they are primarily designed to thrive on a meat-based diet. To force a dog to survive on a vegan diet is nothing short of abuse.
For cats, the need for meat is even greater. They require a diet rich in animal-based protein to survive. Their bodies are adapted to thrive on a meat-based diet. Without a steady supply of nutrients that meat provides, cats can suffer from various health problems, including liver and heart issues, skin irritation and hearing loss. Forcing any cat to eat only plant-based foods is unquestionably abuse.
Vegan cats and dogs, it’s preposterous. What “feel good” lunacy will they come up with next? Will they give a bag of grapefruits to a lion to eat for breakfast? They could stoop that low, nothing is surprising anymore.
If you are opposed to giving a pet the meat it needs for its health and well-being, then don’t have a carnivore, e.g. a dog or a cat, as a pet. Opt for a rabbit or hamster instead.
Four Paws reveals the real agenda behind its fake meat campaign in its reasoning of why fake meat benefits the environment. Following the climate change cult talking points, Four Paws states: “The increasing demand for meat and dairy products is having a detrimental effect on the environment and climate. Worldwide, 14.5 to 16.5% of total human-made greenhouse gas emissions stem from the livestock sector, of which the beef and dairy industries play the biggest part due to its methane emissions. Over 80% of all agricultural land is used to produce animal protein.”
What all the advocates for artificial meat are effectively saying is that pets should not be eating their natural diet because humans want to feel better about themselves. This is a heart-over-head approach, prioritising emotions over rational thinking and logic.
Is Artificial Meat Healthy for Pets and Good for the Environment as Advertised?
As with human diets, the trend towards natural ingredients and avoidance of artificial additives in pet food in recent years has been driven by consumer demand. This is because of the risks of artificial additives that are already added to pet food and can cause allergies, digestive problems, cancer and other unknown risks to our pets’ health.
Read more:
- I’m a pet food expert: avoid these five ingredients in your dog’s food, Northampton Chronicle, 9 February 2024
- The Risks of Artificial Ingredients in Cat Food: Health Concerns to Consider, Love Nala, 23 March 2023
- Artificial Food Coloring: Is It Good for Your Pet? Taste of the Wild Pet Food, 28 June 2018
Of course, advocates of any fake food, whether driven by ideology or profit, will present it as a good alternative for consumers who want to be more responsible but do not wish to change their diet. The same people and organisations conveniently brush over or gaslight the ill effects and detrimental impacts of fake food, as well as the negative impacts of replacing naturally sourced food which is appropriate for a species with non-specific lab-grown protein.
So, what effects might artificial meat have on our pets?
As we stated above, no detrimental impacts to health, society or the environment have been explicitly reported. That doesn’t mean there are none, it simply means they don’t want us to consider them or be aware of them; they simply want to sell their product or ideology and the more unsuspecting the consumer is, the better the sales.
To give some indication of the health impacts lab-grown food may have on our pets, we need to turn to what little information there is on the health impact of these “foods” on humans. After all, Ensor himself believes their pet food will become the natural starting point for the human cultivated meat market in Britain.
A Meatly spokesperson told Just Food that, despite the company currently being “primarily focused on pet food,” its processes and products are safe and healthy for humans. “We will likely license our industry-leading technology to human food companies,” they said.
In 2020, a paper was published by two French researchers which reviewed ‘The Myth of Cultured Meat’. The researchers aimed to update the current knowledge of cultured meat by reviewing “recent publications and issues not well described previously.”
“Although these are not yet known, we speculated on the potential health benefits and drawbacks of cultured meat,” the authors said. The abstract continued:
Unlike conventional meat, cultured muscle cells may be safer, without any adjacent digestive organs. On the other hand, with this high level of cell multiplication, some dysregulation is likely as happens in cancer cells. Likewise, the control of its nutritional composition is still unclear, especially for micronutrients and iron.
Regarding environmental issues, the potential advantages of cultured meat for greenhouse gas emissions are a matter of controversy.
Consumer acceptance will be strongly influenced by many factors and consumers seem to dislike unnatural food.
Ethically, cultured meat aims to use considerably fewer animals than conventional livestock farming. However, some animals will still have to be reared to harvest cells for the production of in vitro meat.
Finally, we discussed in this review the nebulous status of cultured meat from a religious point of view. Indeed, religious authorities are still debating the question of whether in vitro meat is Kosher or Halal (e.g., compliant with Jewish or Islamic dietary laws).
The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review, Frontiers Nutrition, 7 February 2020
From an environmental impact point of view, the paper disputes that lab-grown protein is of known benefit to the environment:
Generally speaking, the production of cultured meat is presented as environmentally friendly, because it is supposed to produce less [greenhouse gases] (which is a matter of controversy), consume less water and use less land (this point being obvious) in comparison to conventional meat production, from ruminants particularly. However, this type of comparison is incomplete and sometimes biased or at least, partial.
The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review, Frontiers Nutrition, 7 February 2020
From a health point of view, the paper also disputes that lab-grown protein is the healthy “food” it is claimed and pointed out that the health consequences are largely unknown:
Health and Safety
… we do not know all the consequences of meat culture for public health, as in vitro meat is a new product. Some authors argue that the process of cell culture is never perfectly controlled and that some unexpected biological mechanisms may occur. For instance, given the great number of cell multiplications taking place, some dysregulation of cell lines is likely to occur as happens in cancer cells, although we can imagine that deregulated cell lines can be eliminated for production or consumption. This may have unknown potential effects on the muscle structure and possibly on human metabolism and health when in vitro meat is consumed.
Antibiotic resistance is known as one of the major problems facing livestock. In comparison, cultured meat is kept in a controlled environment and close monitoring can easily stop any sign of infection. Nevertheless, if antibiotics are added to prevent any contamination, even occasionally to stop early contamination and illness, this argument is less convincing.
… no strategy has been developed to endow cultured meat with certain micronutrients specific to animal products (such as vitamin B12 and iron) and which contribute to good health. Furthermore, the positive effect of any (micro)nutrient can be enhanced if it is introduced in an appropriate matrix. In the case of in vitro meat, it is not certain that the other biological compounds and the way they are organised in cultured cells could potentiate the positive effects of micronutrients on human health. Uptake of micronutrients (such as iron) by cultured cells has thus to be well understood. We cannot exclude a reduction in the health benefits of micronutrients due to the culture medium, depending on its composition. And adding chemicals to the medium makes cultured meat more “chemical” food with less of a clean label.
The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review, Frontiers Nutrition, 7 February 2020
The use of language to psychologically manipulate the public is a well-known tactic in the fake food industry as the paper demonstrated:
Some authors have demonstrated that consumers tend to strongly reject the name “in vitro meat.” Moreover, the term “cultured” is less disliked than the terms “artificial” and “lab-grown.” This is confirmed by [a study] which concluded that participants have a low level of acceptance of cultured meat because it is perceived as unnatural.
The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review, Frontiers Nutrition, 7 February 2020
Perceived as unnatural? It is not a perception; it is unnatural and is precisely why consumers do not and will not trust it, ever. The paper acknowledged this, albeit once again referring to it as a “perception”:
Ethics
… many consumers have concerns about food safety mainly due to the unnaturalness perception of cultured meat, as discussed previously.
The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review, Frontiers Nutrition, 7 February 2020
The bottom line is, if the lab-grown protein they are attempting to market as “cultivated meat” was genuinely healthy and of benefit to the environment, then people would not need to be manipulated using psychological tricks to consume it or purchase it for their pets. The vast majority of consumers are not as unintelligent as ideologues and profiteers would like them to be.
Additionally, we do not want to hand over control of what we eat (or what our pets eat) to nameless, faceless “scientists” in a laboratory who work for companies and oligarchs with questionable ideologies and whose focus is on profit. It’s not only accidents or safety oversights we are concerned about. It is nefarious activities over which we have no oversight or control. How long is it before a psychopath or sociopath decides to add something to the lab-made concoction and poison the lot of us?
Oh wait, uber-rich psychopaths have already done that with the rollout of the covid injections.
Featured image: ‘World first’: UK firm Meatly granted approval to sell cultivated meat pet food, Business Green, 17 July 2024 (left). Meatly unveils the world’s first cultivated chicken pet food, Tech EU, 18 March 2024 (right)
