Meatly has secured regulatory clearance to sell its lab-grown petfood in the UK – making it the first cultivated meat company to secure approval to sell its products in any European country.
The UK business, established in 2022 and backed to the tune of £3.5m by food sector investor Agronomics and retailer Pets at Home, described clearance for its lab-grown chicken as a “huge leap forward for the cultivated meat industry”.
The move followed “a close collaborative process” between the business and the FSA, Defra and the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA), Meatly said, adding it had now passed “APHA’s rigorous inspection process”.
Meatly will continue to adhere to APHA’s ongoing inspections, it added, while its production facility had also been approved by Defra and APHA to produce and handle its product.
As a result, its cultivated chicken for petfood could now be sold in the UK, Meatly said, with the business planning to launch the first samples of its commercially available petfood this year.
Beyond its initial retail samples, Meatly said its primary focus would be on cost reduction as it started to scale up production to reach industrial volumes in the next three years. The company’s protein-free media now costs less than £1 a litre to manufacture, after a gradual reduction in production costs since the business launched two years ago.
It added it had already “secured brand partnerships and production of its products with leading petfood brands”.
Testing of product demonstrated Meatly’s cultivated chicken was “free from bacteria and viruses, that the nutrients used to grow the cells are safe, and that the final chicken product is safe, nutritious, and free from GMOs, antibiotics, harmful pathogens, heavy metals, and other impurities”.
Regulatory approval followed “several significant milestones that have placed Meatly at the forefront of the cultivated meat industry”, it claimed – pointing to an announcement that it had created a canned petfood containing “cruelty-free chicken” in March and its protein-free culture medium in May.
Approval only for animal feed
However, Meatly’s regulatory approval for what is classed as animal feed is separate to existing applications by two cultivated meat companies for meat for human consumption: Ivy Farm and Vital Meat, which is yet to secure approval by the FSA.
“Today marks a significant milestone for the European cultivated meat industry,” said Meatly CEO Owen Ensor.
Read more: FSA to use international approvals for lab grown meat
“I’m incredibly proud that Meatly is the first company in Europe to get the green light to sell cultivated meat. We are proving that there is a safe and low-capital way to rapidly bring cultivated meat to market,” Ensor added.
“We can now continue our mission to give consumers an easy choice – ensuring we can feed our beloved pets the real meat they need and crave, in a way that is kinder to our planet and other animals.”
Investor Jim Mellon, founder of Agronomics, said: “Meatly’s regulatory approval is a landmark event for the industry. Through its technological innovation and close work with governing authorities, Meatly is helping to prove we can succeed in commercialising cultivated products for pets across the UK.
“Our pets consume huge amounts of meat every day and so this development can play a crucial part in reducing the emissions, resource consumption, and animal suffering caused by traditional meat production.”
Dogs and cats were estimated to consume the equivalent of 20% of the total meat consumed and purchased in the UK, the business said, with pets eating more per year than the entire UK population under the age of 18.
Meatly’s cultivated chicken is expected to use up to 64% less land, 28% less water than traditionally sourced chicken, and contains no antibiotics.
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