by Shannon Falconer, CEO, BioCraft Pet Nutrition, Austria
Meat is the central ingredient in commercial pet food. In the wild, meat is the only single source of complete nutrition for both cats and dogs. However, the demand for meat — from not only humans but also cats and dogs — has come with some devastating consequences, including climate change, animal cruelty and risks to public health.
Rising pet and human populations worldwide, plus increased standards of living, place added demands on meat production. Meanwhile, global uncertainties have led to meat supply disruptions for pet food manufacturers.
Yet when it comes to feeding cats and dogs, the nutritional value of meat cannot be matched. Cultured meat allows us to continue to feed our cats and dogs the foods they need without the negative effects of conventionally produced meat.
It’s a potential game-changer for pet food manufacturers, for consumers, for the environment, and for our cats and dogs.
Meat is cells
What is meat? All meat is simply a collection of animal cells. Meat in the traditional sense is produced when these cells grow inside a body. But, when given the right nutrients, these cells can also grow inside a specialised temperature-controlled chamber that allows for gas exchange called a bioreactor.
The end result in both scenarios is 100% meat. It is bioidentical to traditional meat and has the same nutritional value and composition as animal body-grown meat. In fact, as cultured meat is grown in a way that is tunable, nutritional profiles can be achieved that are even superior to that of traditional meat.
Cultured meat is a new application of a relatively old technology. For more than half a century, scientists have grown animal cells without the animal, mostly for the purposes of better understanding biology in order to treat disease. Now, there is new interest in cultured meat as a part of a more sustainable food system, for people and pets.
Whether for disease research or food, culturing animal cells begins with taking a small sample from a living animal, normally from a single biopsy. From that sample the necessary cells are isolated and fed with vitamins, minerals, and amino acids inside the bioreactor.
As those cells consume nutrients, they grow and divide, producing more cells to yield a larger and larger biomass. At harvest time, the mass is collected from the bioreactor and the process starts again.
The petfood industry may call cultured meat a novel protein or an alternative protein, but it should not be considered a ‘meat alternative.’ Cultured meat is meat that is produced in an alternative way.
It’s important to understand that meat is much more than protein. In fact, protein is only one vital nutrient our pets need from meat. Meat inherently offers not only protein, but also free amino acids such as taurine, essential fatty acids, and many vitamins and minerals. Unlike plant- and yeast-based meat alternatives, and unlike recombinantly produced animal protein using microbes, cultured meat delivers these required components, naturally, just like conventionally produced meat.
Cultured meat challenges
To realistically replace conventionally produced meat, especially in pet food applications where there is price sensitivity, cultured meat must be affordable at scale.
Whether growing inside or outside of the animal, those cells must have the right nutrients to grow and divide. A key challenge in cultured meat production has been ensuring the nutritional needs of those cells are met affordably.
During the past decades of cell culture research, especially in biopharmaceuticals and vaccine development, scientists have relied on a pivotal ingredient to feed cells: Fetal bovine serum (FBS). FBS, collected from unborn calves during the slaughter of pregnant cows, gives scientists a nutrient-rich blend of vitamins, trace elements, hormones and growth factors.
However, it carries with it grave ethical concerns, extremely high costs, supply instability, and batch-to-batch variation that complicates scientific output. For cultured meat producers, it has been imperative to find alternatives that are not only cruelty-free and consistent but are readily available and affordable. In our case, it was necessary to formulate a proprietary growth medium for our own use. This FBS alternative addressed the scientific, ethical and supply challenges, and reduced the cost of production significantly, which has been the most critical step towards commercialisation of our technology.
Another current challenge in scaling up cultured meat production is the high cost of acquiring specialised equipment and facilities, both of which are in demand by pharmaceutical and other biochemical companies. These concerns can be mitigated with investment capital into the human and pet food-tech industry.
Healthier for pets
The benefits of cultured meat for the environment, farmed animals and public health are clear: no animals raised inhumanely, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, less land and resource use, and less risk to public health such as zoonotic diseases from livestock. (The main trigger for all pandemics in human history has been the jump of an infectious agent from a farmed or wild animal to a human.)
However, cultured meat also provides health and safety benefits for our cats and dogs. Unlike meat used in current pet food, cultured meat is grown in a controlled environment that is entirely free of common pet food contaminants, including pathogenic bacteria (such as E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria), rendered ingredients from fallen animals, drugs (such as the euthanizing agent pentobarbital), or heavy metals (common in farmed fish).
Most FDA-issued recalls of pet food have arisen out of safety concerns associated with these contaminants — risks that are eliminated in cultured meat. Cultured meat also avoids the use of antibiotics administered to farmed animals to promote growth and as a prophylactic to prevent disease, which contributes to antimicrobial resistance in pets. Since no antibiotics are used in producing cultured meat, none remain in the finished product.
Savvy pet food companies will also find cultured meat opens up new possibilities in formulating recipes for a variety of dietary and health requirements. As the technology matures, expect to see premium or prescription-diet foods from cultured meat that has been “tuned” and customised to deliver specific nutritional benefits, optimised for different life stages, or to be hypoallergenic.
Healthier for industry
In addition to its potential for new product formulas, cultured meat gives pet food producers many other advantages. Cultured meat currently being developed for the pet food market is in the form of a slurry that offers a one-to-one replacement for slurry from conventional meat. However, there are critical differences between cultured-meat slurries and the traditional format — chief among them, consistency.
Cultured-meat slurries guarantee uniform texture, moisture levels, and nutritional profiles, which radically simplifies the manufacturing process, contains costs, and maintains product quality from one lot to the next. While traditional slurries may require fortification, cultured meat is not subjected to rendering, leaving the nutritional consistency of cultured-meat slurries uncompromised.
Uniformity of product extends to its utility. Traditional meat slurries can contain high levels of bone and connective tissue that make them unsuitable for some pets and some diets but cultured-meat slurry contains no by-products. Not only is cultured-meat slurry usable in formulas for cats and dogs of all life stages and conditions, but it is also appropriate for wet or dry foods and treats.
Consistency in fat and flavour helps meet consumer (and pet) expectations for palatability, so that pets’ favourite foods remain their favourites, bowl after bowl. While the absence of contaminants and pathogens in cultured meat is a major advantage in avoiding reputation-blasting recalls, cultured-meat slurries are expected to meet a higher standard for ingredient transparency and traceability such as sourcing, production methods, and quality assurance.
But the most likely value to manufacturers is enhanced supply-chain resilience. Cultured meat offers a way to reduce dependence on the volatility of traditional meat sources. The impact of farmed animal diseases, shortages, and price fluctuations has been hard on the industry, and cultured meat will bring a more stable, reliable, and efficient supply.
The first manufacturers to introduce cultured meat to the market will win environmentally and ethically conscious pet owners, promote sustainability and further ESG goals. The real game-changer of cultured meat is not only its environmental and animal welfare benefits, but also the health benefits for cats and dogs, and healthier profits for manufacturers.