Your pet’s dinner just got weird, in a good way. BioCraft, a US-based biotech outfit that’s been quietly cooking up mouse meat in a lab (yes, really), has just scored clearance to sell its cell-cultured pet food ingredients in the EU. No need to panic, this isn’t sci-fi gone rogue. It’s clean, non-GMO, non-immortalised, pathogen-free meat made from actual animal cells. And European pet food giant Partner in Pet Food is sniffing around, saying it’s “investigating options” with BioCraft.
Source: BioCraft - Cat eating cell-cultured mouse meat
At present the EU doesn’t have a pre-market approval system for pet food ingredients. Instead, companies must jump through the fiery hoop of registering as a Category 3 Animal Byproducts supplier. Think mountains of paperwork, lab tests galore, and a hazard control plan so intense it’d make your vet sweat. BioCraft is the first (and so far, only) company to pull it off with cultured cells.
Over three years, BioCraft had vets, food safety boffins, and nutrition scientists crawl all over its process. The result? A nutritionally comparable product to the meat slurry your pet’s already chowing down on, just without the abattoir. It’s got all the taurine, lysine and omega fatty acids your furry friend needs, but with a better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio than regular chicken bits. The meat is bacteria free, contains no toxins and no gene-editing.
The first product? Cultured mouse. Sounds gross to us, but it’s pretty much ancestral prey for cats and yes, dogs too. BioCraft’s version can slip right into your pet’s wet or dry food without a fuss. You won’t even notice. But your pet will.
Is this the future of pet food? Looks like it. And with big players already circling, don’t be surprised if Muffy and Max start munching on lab-grown dinner sooner than you think.
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