Many companies like Memphis Meats, Mosa Meat etc are going the Cellular road of growing muscle cells for human consumption. However Bond Pet Foods is going the acellular route as pet food has a lower “yuck” factor hurdle than for humans. It’s also smart in the current market because many people extend their own values to their pets. Clean Pet Food addresses these values issue by allowing owner and pet to go “Clean” together.
They’re “taking the DNA that in chicken encodes muscle protein, and putting it into a single-celled microbial host. We then use the cellular machinery of the microbe to produce chicken-identical protein via fermentation, feeding the cells sugar and simple, non-animal derived nutrients until it reaches a certain density before harvest”. They’ll then dry the resulting product for incorporation into pet food such as dog treats.
Bond are at the seed funding stage now but envisage that that with sufficient funding they could have product to market in 2-3 years.
With cellular and acellular ag companies continuing to proliferate and in ever widening applications these technologies are definite threats to the conventional meat industries. When you can buy milk, egg whites and meat made using these technologies in your local supermarket it’ll get very interesting.
