Cultivated meat is now approved for sale in Europe but dont break out the fine China just yet.
The first dishes are exclusively reserved for pets.
Our furry friends can now legally dine on cultivated chicken fromMeatly, a startup based in London.
The company announced on Monday that British regulators have rubber-stamped sales of theproduct.
Byproviding the green-light, the UK has become the first European country to commercialise lab-grown meat.
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That sustainability derives from bringing the farm to the lab.
Meatlys model
Meat productionconsumesvast natural resourcesand leaves a heavy carbon footprint.
Meatly plans to soften these blows to our planet.The startup first extracts cells from a single chicken egg.
Just one sample is required for the entire production run.
The extracts are then cultivated in large containers, which control temperature and pH levels.
Nutrients are inserted to ensure that the cells grow big and strong.
Finally, theyre formed into pet food that resembles the products found on supermarket shelves.
A similar process has been applied by various Europeanstartups, from GermanysBluu Seafoodto the NetherlandsMeatable.
But theirdelicaciestypically target human appetites.
Meatly has good reasons to focus on our four-legged friends.
One is the sustainability impact:pets are estimatedto eat 20% of the worlds meat and fish.
Another draw of Meatlys model is the path to market.
Cultivated meat for humans hasstruggled to gain approvalfor consumption and sale inEurope.
Food for pets, the thinking goes, will have lower regulatory barriers.
But will their owners buy the products?
At Meatly, that option is now being refined.
The startup plans to launch samples of commercially-available pet food this year.
Mass production is slated to start within three years.
There are stillscale and cost hurdlesto overcome, but Ensor has a growing sense of optimism.
And not just for our four-legged friends!
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
