Europe's First Cultivated Meat Goes on Sale in the UK as Dog Treats

Dog treats made with chicken grown from cells, without raising or slaughtering a single bird, have gone on sale at a UK pet shop this week, in what Meatly says is the first sale of cultivated meat anywhere in Europe.

The treats, called Chick Bites, are made by London start-up Meatly together with vegan pet food company THE PACK, and blend Meatly's cultivated chicken with plant-based ingredients. From February 7 they are stocked at the Pets at Home store in Brentford, west London, in 50g pouches priced at £3.49. It's a limited run of around 750 to start.

Last July the UK became the first country in Europe to approve cultivated meat for use in pet food. Meatly says all of its chicken comes from a single sample of cells taken from one chicken egg, and that this is enough to feed pets “forever”. Pets at Home, the UK's largest pet retailer and one of Meatly's biggest investors, says it believes it is the first company in the world to sell cultivated meat for pet food.

Meatly founder and CEO Owen Ensor said:

Just two years ago, this felt like a moonshot. Today, we take off. It's a giant leap forward, toward a significant market for meat, which is healthy, sustainable and kind to our planet and other animals.

THE PACK co-founder and CEO Damien Clarkson called it a “watershed moment”:

Cultivated meat offers a tasty, low-carbon, and healthy protein source, which has the potential to eliminate farmed animals from the pet food industry.

That potential is huge. Research cited by Meatly suggests pets account for 22% of the UK's meat consumption, more than British children eat every year. Labradors alone get through around 70 million kg of meat annually.

And meat is the heaviest thing on our food system. The biggest analysis of farming ever done, by Joseph Poore at Oxford University, found that meat and dairy use 83% of the world's farmland and produce 60% of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions, while providing just 18% of our calories. Every bowl filled without a farmed animal is a step in the right direction.

Meatly plans further small releases and wants to make its chicken widely available within three to five years. Humans will have to wait, as UK approval so far covers pet food only.

It's another milestone in a story that started when Singapore approved lab-grown chicken in 2020. Since then the Dutch government invested 60 million euros in cultivated meat, the US approved lab-grown chicken, Israel approved the world's first cultivated beef and Hong Kong started selling cultivated quail.

Lucky dogs. The future is looking brighter.