Exploring the Future of Food with Our Dog’s First Taste of ‘Lab-grown’ Meat

History was in the making in our household. To celebrate Bruce’s first ‘Gotcha Day!’, the anniversary of when we rescued him, he was about to taste something truly out of this world: cultivated chicken made from stem-cells. 

What would he make of it? Would he turn his nose up? I opened the packet. Inside were brown-speckled dog-paw-shaped treats. For fun, my wife Helen arranged four of them as ‘footprints’ on our granite worktop. Half Rottweiler and the rest anyone’s guess, Bruce sat expectantly, tail wagging and licking his lips. His eyes fixed, tantalised by what he was about to receive. 

Out of the packet, the first few went down in a heartbeat. He sniffed around hoping for more. Then temptation got the better of his limited patience and he was up on his back legs. Before I could tell him otherwise, his tongue had surreptitiously swept up the ‘footprints’ on the tabletop, leaving only a saliva trail behind. 

Bruce’s verdict? He loved them. 

The same but different

To be fair, he’s like that with any meaty treats. But that was the point. Bruce took to his first taste of so-called ‘lab-grown’ meat in much the same way he would ordinary chicken. To him, it tasted the same. 

And that really is the thing: cultivated meat is real meat, only produced differently. From samples of cells taken from eggs or living animals using a harmless biopsy and then grown in a bioreactor. One sample can grow enough meat to produce 80,000 burgers. Using a fraction of the land and with less greenhouse gas emissions than creating meat in the traditional way. 

Pioneering

Those obvious animal welfare and planetary benefits were why I was keen for Bruce to try ‘Chick Bites’, the first ever cultivated meat product to gain official approval for sale in the UK. The company behind the breakthrough, Meatly, is run by Owen Ensor, originally from Edinburgh. 

The market breakthrough prompted former chief scientific adviser at the government’s Food Standards Agency, Professor Guy Poppy to tell the BBC: “This is an opportunity to offer the advantages of meat but without the carbon and environmental footprint.“

Whilst being the first time anywhere in the world that cultivated meat has been approved in pet food, it is already on menus for human consumers in pioneering countries. Singapore was the first in 2020, followed by the US and then Israel, where the first ever cultivated beef steaks went on sale. Regulatory review is ongoing in a range of countries, including the European Union, Australia, Switzerland, Thailand, and the UK. 

Missing out!

My own journey to taste the difference made by cultivated meat hasn’t been straightforward. Covid prevented me from flying to the States in 2020 to be one of the very first to try cultivated chicken. At that time, more people had probably been into space than had tried this futuristic meat. I felt so disappointed.

How made up was I then when I got another chance to try it last year in South Africa.  During a visit to Cape Town, I accepted an invitation from Brett Thompson, CEO of pioneering start-up, Newform Foods to sample its cultivated lamb meatballs. The cells were donated by Pecorino, a happy, healthy sheep, enjoying life at the Greyton Farm Animal Sanctuary in the Western Cape. What did it taste like? Delicious! 

So, I’m in for cultivated meat on our plate, but what about others? 

Consumer attitudes

According to the UK Food Standards Agency, a third of consumers are willing to try cultivated meat. A recent YouGov survey in the US found a positive outlook for a product yet to be available for mass consumption, with only 50% of the participants saying they preferred to eat animal meat over cultivated meat. Whilst in India, 60% of consumers would consume cultivated meat with 46% saying they were willing to pay a premium for it. 

Which seems to me greatly encouraging, given that in most countries it hasn’t been approved yet for human consumption. 

It suggests the media has overplayed the “yuk” factor, described as a negative perception by some unfamiliar with meat created in a new way.

The real cause for a “yuk” factor is firmly reserved in my view for meat from mega-farms, where poor labelling and a lack of transparency prevents consumers knowing how the animals behind their meat were treated. 

If you could choose between meat from an animal that has lived a life of suffering, lying in their own excrement and fed antibiotics, or meat from clean stem cells, which would it be? 

If food labelling were clear and honest, there’d be no contest. 

Food’s renewable energy

In the end, consumer acceptance of cultivated meat will come down to how it is labelled and perceptions of ‘natural’. Today, very little of our society – cars, electricity, computers, cities – is natural. I see cultivated meat as humanity’s version of something that nature has already given us. Produced differently, but nonetheless the same. 

My bet is it won’t be long before cultivated meat is seen as the renewable energy equivalent for food. Meat with all the taste and texture but without the downsides. 

Which brings me back to Bruce and his celebratory treats of cultivated chicken bites. He loved them just as he likes any other. He couldn’t read the packet. He just followed his nose. And that told him they were more than worth getting excited for. For him, it was just another small snack. For us, it could be a giant leap for humankind. 

Note: This is a version of an article that was first published in The Scotsman on Friday 18^th April, 2025