UK Approves Lab-Grown Meat in Pet Food
The UK has become the first country in Europe to approve the sale of lab-grown meat.
But people might have to wait a bit longer until they can enjoy a lab-grown burger. For now, it's only been approved for pet food from the company Meatly.
Meatly is a company based in London, that makes pet food from lab-grown chicken.
To make the chicken, scientists take cells from a chicken egg, place them in a temperature-controlled container in a lab, and give them the vitamins and minerals they need to grow.
Meatly works with different pet food makers to make its products. And now that it has approval from the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pet owners in the UK could be seeing these products in shops in just a few months.
For now, the company said it wants to focus on reducing costs, which could be done by mixing the meat with vegetables. It also plans to scale production to industrial levels within the next three years.
Meatly CEO Owen Ensor said that people in the UK could soon give their pets the meat they need "in a way that is kinder to our planet and other animals."
Lab-grown meat requires significantly less water and land than farmed meat, and no animals are killed in the process.
While the UK has not approved any lab-grown meat products for humans, other countries have. Singapore became the first country to do so in 2020, followed by the US and Israel.
However, Florida and Alabama recently banned lab-grown meat, saying it threatens the livelihood of farmers. The decision came a few months after Italy banned lab-grown meat for the same reason.
