I woke up this week to mainstream media lauding a new dog treat. Now I know I am not a vet and that I usually talk about humans, so why am I taking the time to look at dog treats?
Well, these dog treats are like nothing before and trust me, they are the start of a swift ride to human treats and then human ‘meats’ and have serious ethical questions reaching far into society and how it is shaped in the future.
Let’s start with this dog treat and what it is made from (wait for it). It is allegedly the first lab-grown meat for pets and is on sale at Pets at Home, who ail it as a world first. Called Chick Bites, the treats are made from plant-based ingredients combined with ‘cultivated’ meat. What is 'cultivated meat', I hear you say.
Well, it isn't meat; it is an ultra-processed product made by growing cells from an animal or egg in a lab. It is not made from a well-looked-after, healthy chicken at all. And when it expands to cows, sheeps and pigs, which it will, it won’t be grown from a healthy, well looked after farmed one of those creatures either.
Lab-grown pet food has concerning societal implications, writes Renee Hoenderkamp
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The manufacturer, Meatly, said the chicken was produced from a single sample of cells taken from one chicken egg, from which enough cultivated meat could be produced to feed pets “forever”. The statement continues: It’s “just as tasty and nutritious as traditional chicken breast”, and contains the amino acids, fatty acids, minerals and vitamins needed for pet health.
I want to know how they know it is delicious. Did the dogs tell them? Did they offer 1000 dogs a leg of real chicken and a fake meat treat, and the majority rejected the fresh chicken and went for the treat?
Last year, the UK became the first country in Europe to back cultivated meat for use in pet food, wth approval from DEFRA, the animal and plant health agency who frankly have completely lost sight of what healthy farming and eating good foods means.
Pets at Home said that the snack was a nutritious, healthy and sustainable alternative to traditional dog treats. Meatly’s founding chief executive, Owen Ensor, said: “It’s a giant leap forward toward a significant market for meat which is healthy, sustainable and kind to our planet and other animals.”
And there it is chaps, its part of the net zero madness and trust me, those driving the net zero plan have decided that we, humans, will eat lab-grown meat and because there is a level of distrust, revulsion and refusal by humans, they are aiming at pets first and are hoping that if it becomes acceptable for your poor pets, then it will slip more easily into our diets. They won't need farmers.
So this is just one of the ethical issues raised by this. Currently, pet food is usually made from the waste products of slaughtering and preparing animals for human consumption. If we use this ‘one egg’ cell line to feed pets forever, this waste product will become just that and be wasted. I would rather we use every part of an animal that we breed and raise for human consumption.
Thereafter, if the aim is to move slowly to lab-grown meat, then we will no longer need livestock farms and farmers and all of the ancillary workers. So a whole swathe of society become unemployed and go from net contributors to society to net beneficiaries and yet another tax revenue stream is lost. And of course, what happens to the livestock on farms, they all get slaughtered and wasted to save the planet.
Secondly, the data is clear now that ultra-processing of food is bad and causes obesity and cancer. If we duplicate this in our pets, are we actually just reducing the quality of their diet and putting them at risk of disease long-term? Is this ethical? Even if it is, I don’t believe pet owners would knowingly do this.
Then, of course, there is the long-term plan - and this really is the reason that my ears pricked up when I read this story. I believe that this is just the first step in making lab-grown meat acceptable to us, and currently, public opinion is very sceptical. A YouGov poll suggests that a quarter of UK residents are willing to try lab-grown meat. That’s surprisingly high to me, but not enough to get rid of meat. So there is a way to go, and it is a way that the global governing elite (UN, WHO, WEF) want to go. So this may well be a sneaky way to try and acclimatise pet owners to the idea first, as pet owners often put their furry friends above their own needs. It's clever and sinister, in my honest opinion.
Well, I promise you, I won't be eating lab-grown, ultra-processed, non-meat. Not now, not in 20 years nor 50. A healthy diet is packed with pasture-fed, home-cooked, quality animal meat that has never seen the inside of a test tube. I will keep livestock in my garden if I have to!
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