Cultivated Pet Food Made From Mouse Cells Gets EU Approval

Vienna-based BioCraft Pet Nutrition has successfully registered its cell-cultured pet food ingredients with Austrian authorities, meaning the company can begin supplying companion animal food producers throughout the European Union. The registration was approved in line with the use of Category 3 Animal Byproducts (ABP) for cell multiplication in pet food production.

BioCraft Pet Nutrition was founded in 2016 by its CEO, Shannon Falconer. She left her post-doctoral research fellowship at Stanford University and a prestigious academic scholarship to pursue improving the lives of farmed and domestic animals. Her stated vision was: “Better nutrition for cats and dogs…that doesn’t come at the expense of other animals or the health of our planet.”

The process saw the company submitting to a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan. This was supported by BioCraft conducting studies with input from food safety, veterinary, and food science specialists. These studies concluded that BioCraft’s ingredients are all derived from stable, non-GMO animal cells. It also confirmed that the ingredients are free from bacterial pathogens, viruses, mycotoxins, and heavy metals.

Read more: What Is Cultured Meat? Here’s What You Need To Know

“Achieving ABP registration for an animal cell-based ingredient in the EU is a significant milestone for BioCraft and the industry as a whole,” said Falconer. “This comprehensive safety analysis goes well beyond regulatory compliance and provides a meticulous breakdown of our feed safety protocols, including stringent supplier verification processes, traceability documentation, risk assessments, and SOPs for every critical control point. We’ve implemented rigorous quality control measures and transparency across our supply chain, and the result is the highest industry standards for safety and integrity in alternative protein production.”

Testing finds a superior nutrition profile in BioCraft’s cell-cultured meat

Third-party testing compared BioCraft’s cell-cultured ingredients against conventional meat slurry used in pet food. The findings confirmed that key nutrients, including taurine and lysine, were similar for the approval. The omega fatty acid ratio was found to be superior in the BioCraft ingredients against a conventional chicken slurry. 

BioCraft’s product is created with mouse cells, the ancestral prey of both cats and dogs. The process of obtaining the cells in cell-cultured meat involves taking a small tissue sample from a live animal. It is a biopsy, similar to those performed on humans, and is supposedly a minimally invasive procedure. However, there are currently no regulations for the procurement of animal cells.

BioCraft, however, states that “BioCrafted Meat is produced from a single sample of cells from a single animal which is enough to produce meat forever. We also don’t need any animal products to grow the cells — no fetal bovine serum here.”

Read more: Cell-Cultured Meat ‘Likely’ To Make Up 40% Of Future Meat Intake, Finds New Survey