Lab-Grown Meat for Pets Goes on Sale in UK

Last summer the UK became the first country in Europe to legalize pet-food meat grown in a lab. This week the company Meatly has put its lab-grown dog treat called Chick Bites on the store shelves for the first time.

The faux chicken treat begins with a real egg, from which the lab techs extract a small sample of cells. As with, say, a sourdough starter, the cells can be regenerated indefinitely. “We take a small sample of cells from a chicken egg, once,” Meatly promises on its website. “After this, we never use another animal product in our production, ever.”

The cells are fed with vitamins, minerals, and amino acids “until they become delicious meat.” The company says the product is GMO-free and, unlike a lot of traditionally grown meat, aren’t imbued with antibiotics. “We manage each step in the production process so we can make sure there are no unwanted chemicals, bacteria, or other nasties in our meat.”

At the moment Chick Bites are available at a single Pets at Home store in Brentford, England. Pets at Home is a big investor in Meatly, which claims the new product “has the potential to significantly reduce the environmental impact of pet food.”

Manufactured meat uses 45% less energy than a conventional farm, not to mention 95% less land and 78% less water, according to estimates by the European Environment Agency. No word from the animals involved but we’ll assume they’re onboard with the lab-meat movement.

In the US, lab-grown chicken was approved by the USDA for human consumption in 2023, though it has not hit store shelves yet. But with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poised to become the next head of Health and Human Services, faux meat faces an uncertain future. “[T]he industry's fake meat is just another name for ultra-processed food,” Kennedy recently insisted on X . “Full of GE and pesticide-laden ingredients designed to look as much like meat as possible.”

Photo credit: Meatly