Meet the company that makes mouse meat cat treats without harming animals

Because Animals pet food startup CEO Shannon Falconer hasn’t eaten meat for years, but the former Stanford microbiologist and longtime animal rescue volunteer says she never denied his pets the meat they wanted. After all, cats are carnivores and dogs are omnivores in nature.

Falconer and Because Animals co-founder Joshua Errett (also an experienced animal rescuer) has strived to make pet foods that meet the ‘ancestral diet’ of cats and dogs, but don’t require slaughter or raise animals in an industrial environment. .

This week, the start-up presents its Harmless Hunt Cultured Mouse Cat Treats, their first clean meat product, at SuperZoo, one of the pet food industry’s largest trade shows.

The treats are made with mouse tissue grown from stem cells in a food-grade bioreactor on a vegan medium, Falconer explained. No mice were killed to make the treats, but scientists had to take cells from the ears of donor mice to start. The process involved putting a mouse under mild anesthesia while its ear was pierced.

Two years later, the donor mice are doing well, Falconer says. The employees of Because Animals adopted all three of them and they live in a rather plush mouse house.

Most of the companies involved in the nascent clean meat industry are focused on the production of food for humans.

These include: the Dutch start-up Mosa Meat which caused a sensation with the world’s first grown beef burger in 2013; Israeli company Aleph Farms, which makes “no-slaughter steaks”; Upside Foods in California, which makes farmed chicken and duck; and Bluu Biosciences developers of seafood grown from fish cells, among others.

As CNBC previously reported, the alternative meat market – including clean meat – is expected to grow to $ 140 billion over the next decade, capturing around 10% of the global industry’s $ 1.4 trillion industry. meat.

Clean meat is not without criticism. No one has yet succeeded in increasing the production of lab-grown meat to promising levels to feed the world.

Further, researchers at the University of Oxford noted: “It is not yet clear what the emissions footprints of actual crop production systems will look like. At the same time, advances in animal technology promise to make the traditional meat industry healthier and more sustainable.

Yet venture capitalists have jumped at the opportunity to disrupt the traditional industry and hopefully reduce the negative environmental impacts of global meat consumption. According to a PitchBook analysis, 66 clean meat start-ups have already raised $ 1.77 billion in venture capital from 382 separate investors.

For its part, Because Animals has raised $ 6.7 million to date, from investors such as SOSV, Draper Associates and Orkla. SOSV is one of the most active investors in this space, with at least 10 clean meat companies in its portfolio as of July 2021.

SOSV general partner Bill Liao said Because Animals could pave the way for mass production faster than other clean meat companies.

On the one hand, because Animals don’t make tiny steaks from mouse meat – they just need to produce enough cultured mouse tissue to give their pet food a flavor profile that cats and dogs will love. . (The company’s new treats include other ingredients like cultured yeast and pumpkin, Falconer told CNBC.)

He added, “One of the biggest challenges in cellular agriculture is the sustainable and inexpensive support. Because Animals developed this very thing – and it’s vegan.

Many other clean meat companies have relied on fetal bovine serum, derived from the blood of animals, to aid in the growth and duplication of animal cells for their products. However, FBS is very expensive and its use irritates animal rights and climate advocates.

Because Animals have developed their own animal-free formulation, and Liao believes the technology will be widely applicable, perhaps beyond pet foods.

Falconer, for now, says it is focusing on the growing category of pet food.

The CEO decided to research sustainable pet food while working as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine, she recalls.

Research animals were all around her, and she didn’t have the expertise to eliminate the scientists’ need for them. But with her advanced degrees in microbiology and biochemistry, she was able to cultivate different types of microorganisms and cells in the laboratory.

Falconer saw the potential to use his scientific skills to reduce or remove animals from the food supply chain. But she also felt that in her own diet there were many options to choose from, both in restaurants and in grocery stores. She especially likes lentils and tofu, she says, but is a big fan of Impossible Foods’ plant-based substitutes for meat products.

“We can always use more,” said the CEO, “and I’m glad there are even more alternatives. But there was absolutely nothing for my cats and virtually nothing for the dogs.”

Falconer first wondered if pet food was a big enough market to tackle, and what an environmental difference it might make to shift meat production for pet food to grown ingredients.

Livestock were responsible for the equivalent of 260.54 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 2019, according to the latest available data from the EPA.

The amount of pet food consumed is paltry compared to the consumption of human meat, Falconer found. But pet food is produced from the remnants of the global meat supply chain, including tons of meat that could not be sold for human consumption, and meat from dead animals that die in transit, or from suffocation in agricultural facilities or from disease.

“All of that meat is diverted into pet food,” Falconer said, “and that keeps animal agriculture afloat without making big changes.

Today, the pet food market is growing, supported by increased adoption of dogs and cats by millennials and greater awareness of the health benefits of pet nutrition.. According to Grand View Research, the pet food market is expected to reach approximately $ 90.4 billion by 2025.

If Because Animals has the impact Falconer is looking for, a significant part of it will soon be transferred to Clean Meat and other sustainable products. The next challenge for the company will be to move to a larger commercial kitchen, while continuing to develop new clean, meat-based pet foods.