In February 2025, a British pet food company called Pets at Home began selling dog treats made with chicken that had never come from a chicken. The product, called Chick Bites, was made using cultivated chicken meat grown in a lab from a single egg cell by a startup called Meatly.
Yes, it sounds strange. But here is why it matters beyond the dog bowl.
Producing lab-grown meat for pets requires the same regulatory approvals and safety standards as human food, but the public reaction tends to be gentler. Nobody panics if their schnauzer eats something novel. That makes pet food the ideal test market, a place to prove the science, satisfy regulators, and build production capacity before moving into human products.
Meatly’s chicken grows in fermentation tanks, fed by nutrients rather than by raising and slaughtering an animal. The result is genuine animal protein at a fraction of the environmental cost.
Food companies expect cultivated meat to move through regulatory review in multiple countries within the next few years. The dog ate first. The rest of us may not be far behind.