Pets got there first: cultivated meat finds its real-world proving ground

Cultivated meat has spent years promising commercial reality. Pet food is beginning to show what happens when the product finally reaches the bowl

For cultivated meat, securing regulatory approval is just the start. Getting a cat to cooperate is another. BioCraft Pet Nutrition has just put that second question to the test, pitting a lickable cat treat containing its cell-cultured mouse ingredient against Applaws Chicken Creamy Lickable Treat in an independent 40-cat feeding trial.

The result was about as even as it could have been. Twenty cats took their first bite from BioCraft and 20 chose Applaws. Across the full test, 17 ate more of the BioCraft treat, 19 ate more Applaws and four consumed equal amounts. Regionales-Produkt-Panel, the German research company that conducted the trial, found no statistically significant preference between the two products.

For a technology that has spent much of the past decade being discussed in terms of bioreactors, regulation, cost and scale, it is a strikingly ordinary test of commercial readiness: put two bowls down and see what happens.

Dr Shannon Falconer, Founder & CEO at BioCraft, is also open about how much work it took to get there. “Our earliest palatability trials with the ingredient transparently didn't go very well,” she said. “We didn't want to mask off-notes with the palatants already on the market, so instead we identified what was causing the poor palatability, removed it, and then found the components that would synergize with our ingredient to bring out its natural, tasty notes, making the final product irresistible to the feline nose.”

That process helps explain why companion animal nutrition is becoming such an interesting early commercial test for cultivated proteins. It is not simply somewhere to sell an ingredient while the human food market catches up. It is somewhere companies can discover whether the technology survives contact with the demands of an actual product.

BioCraft is not alone. In February 2025, Meatly and THE PACK put Chick Bites on sale at a Pets at Home store in the UK, marking Europe's first commercial sale of cultivated meat for either people or pets. The launch followed UK regulatory clearance for Meatly's cultivated chicken in 2024.

The company has since moved decisively toward scale. In May 2026, it raised £10.4 million (US$14 million) to build a 20,000L facility in London, with commercial production expected from 2027.

BeneMeat has taken another route. In May, Italian pet food producer FORZA10 unveiled Coolty Meat, a complete wet dog food containing 26% cultivated meat produced by the Czech company.

BeneMeat has also been gathering evidence on what happens after the food reaches the animal. In a peer-reviewed feeding study involving 10 cats, its cultivated meat diet recorded strong acceptance, with protein and fat digestibility comparable with the conventional chicken control.

These are useful milestones because pet food allows cultivated protein to be judged on something more tangible than whether the underlying science works.

Can it be formulated into something manufacturers can use? Will animals eat it? Can production move beyond laboratory quantities? Will owners buy it more than once?

That last question may prove particularly important. Research involving more than 4,000 dog and cat guardians, co-authored by veterinary professor Andrew Knight, found cultivated meat was the most accepted of the sustainable pet-food alternatives examined. Among guardians currently feeding conventional or raw meat diets, 24% of dog owners and 33% of cat owners considered cultivated meat acceptable.

But sustainability was not the overriding consideration. Nutritional soundness and confidence that a diet would support good health ranked more highly.

That is an important reality check for companies tempted to assume the environmental case will sell the product for them. People may be willing to rethink what goes into the bowl, but the product still has to do the job owners expect from pet food.

There are signs that the conversation changes once consumers can actually buy it.

Friends & Family Pet Food has launched a range of cultivated-meat pet foods in Singapore following its debut at Pet Expo, where its initial products sold out. The company's range spans 12 SKUs containing up to nearly 70% cultivated meat.

Founder Joshua Errett told PPTI that early customers were not fixated on the questions that have dominated cultivated meat conferences and investor presentations for years. “When people can actually hold the product in their hands, pour it out, and feed it to their dog, it stops being abstract,” he said.

That may be one of pet food's most useful contributions to the cultivated protein sector.

For years, cultivated meat has largely been something consumers have been asked to imagine. Companies could model production economics, run tastings, publish life-cycle assessments and explain how future factories might operate. Pet food is beginning to replace some of those hypotheticals with products, feeding trials and purchasing decisions.

It also gives companies somewhere to learn.

BioCraft's latest trial is a good example. Its new treat combines its cell-cultured mouse ingredient with animal-free components in a finished formulation that pet food manufacturers could take to market under their own brands or adapt into other products. The company has also developed an AI-assisted approach to palatability, using human and feline trial data to guide formulation work across treats, wet food, dry food and toppers.

In other words, the lesson from pet food may not simply be that it gets cultivated protein onto shelves sooner. It could provide an environment in which companies find out what actually works before attempting much larger markets.

That still leaves some difficult questions.

Does success in pet food translate into greater acceptance of cultivated meat for people, or will consumers treat the two categories entirely differently? How much can manufacturing experience transfer between them? Will pet food generate enough volume to help bring production costs down? And as more products reach the market, will owners remain interested once novelty gives way to routine purchasing?

Those questions will sit at the heart of Why Pets are First to the Table at the Cultured Meat Symposium in Amsterdam.

The panel brings together Elena Pagani, Innovation Director at dsm-firmenich; Billy Nicholles, Researcher at Bryant Research; Andrew Knight, Veterinary Professor at the Sustainable Pet Food Foundation; Jan Luprich, Strategic Partnerships Lead at BeneMeat; and Vinayaka Srinivas, Founder & CEO of Happy Petto.

Between them, they bring perspectives spanning nutrition, consumer research, veterinary science, cultivated meat production and pet-food commercialization.

And by the time they take the stage, the conversation has moved on from whether cultivated pet food is theoretically possible.

Cats have eaten it. Dogs have eaten it. Owners have bought it. Companies are building production capacity around it.

The more interesting question now is what the cultivated protein sector can learn from what happens next.

Why Pets are First to the Table takes place at the Cultured Meat Symposium, co-located with The Future of Protein Production Amsterdam, from 4:20-5:00pm on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at RAI Amsterdam. Click here to book your conference pass or to register for the free-to-attend exhibition ticket