This week cell-cultivated meat company Bene Meat Technologies (BMT), became the first company granted European Union certification in the European Feed Materials Register for laboratory-grown meat for use in pet food.
This gives the company the green light to further develop their product, scale up production, and make the product available to shoppers.
The Czech startup was founded in 2020 and aims to develop technology that produces cultured meat by multiplying animal cells without using raw materials from slaughtered animals while allowing operators to offer this product at prices that are affordable to consumers.
BMT employs an international team of more than 60 researchers and developers.
The company has yet to reveal which species the cells come from.
According to the BMT, pet food production is responsible for 25 percent of the carbon footprint of animal husbandry.
Research published earlier this year in Harvard Dataverse, found that 40 percent of pet owners perceive the ethical dimension of animal breeding and slaughter as problematic, and 50 percent would prefer to feed their pets with sustainable, ethically cultivated meat.
With a price point comparable to higher-priced pet food on the market, I'm sure I'm not the only fussy cat owners hoping they like it.
The news comes at a time when well-funded, technologically advancing companies in Europe creating cell-cultivated products such as meat for human use, and breast milk for babies are experiencing regulatory delays in gaining the necessary approvals to commercialise their offerings.
In May, Dutch company Meatable announced it could create cultivated pork meat sausages in only eight days, with the highest quality muscle and fat cells, thanks to a differentiation process that can scale at pace with lower costs.
Traditionally, it takes farmers around eight months to rear a pig for pork.
Lead image: Priscilla Du Preez.
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