Lab grown meat has found its next frontier: pet food.
What’s happening:
- Cultivated meat pet food startup Meatly has announced they have received approval from British regulators to bring cultivated meat to pet food for the first time ever
Why it matters:
- This is the first ever approval in Europe for cultivated meat to be used as a source of protein for pets and animals, marking a potentially transformational shift for the future of animal nutrition
- Cultivated meat has enormous potential for reducing the global dependence on factory farming, as well as decreasing the amount of harmful emissions that are caused by livestock and cattle farming
Going deeper:
- Cultivated meat for human consumption has already been approved by the United States, Singapore and Israel
- Meatly plans to beginning rolling out initial products to distributors imminently, however they have publicly stated that the initial quantities will be relatively small until they are able to achieve full scale commercial production capabilities
The intrigue:
- Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos has become one of the most notable philanthropic donors for lab grown meat research, making two recent large donations through the Bezos Earth Fund to build new scientific centres at Imperial College of London and N.C. State University focused on developing new breakthroughs in cellular agriculture and cultivated meat production