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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Pet Food

Pet Food Snapshot: Innovation, Cultivation, and a Ruff Patch

Whenever I head to the pet food store, I’m simultaneously overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice available on the shelves and disappointed by the limited selection of alternatives that don’t rely on traditional animal agriculture.

The good news for those looking for more sustainable alternatives is that the alt-protein pet food sector has been slowly inching forward (and occasionally stepping back, as you’ll see below), but there has recently been a surge of news in this space.

First up, this week German pet food manufacturer Marsapet, in partnership with Calysta, launched “MicroBell,” a dry kibble featuring FeedKind Pet protein produced via gas fermentation. Gas fermentation uses microbes to produce protein, eliminating the need for arable land or animal ingredients.

Last month, Meatly became the first company globally to offer pet food made from cultivated meat. Partnering with plant-based dog food brand THE PACK, Meatly introduced “Chick Bites,” a limited-release dog treat that blends plant-based ingredients with Meatly Chicken. Following this launch, Meatly is focused on scaling production and making cultivated pet food more widely available. The company plans to raise additional funds to expand production and distribute Meatly Chicken to more retailers over the next three to five years. Future collaborations with THE PACK and Pets at Home are also in the pipeline.

Finally, despite positive news from both the cultivated meat and gas fermentation fronts, the industry faces challenges. Wild Earth, a vegan pet food startup that gained prominence after securing a deal on “Shark Tank” in 2018, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. The company reported $2.4 million in assets against $12.6 million in liabilities. Co-founder and CEO Ryan Bethencourt—who has been one of the most influential voices in alternative proteins over the past decade—cited difficulties in securing venture capital and managing debt as contributing factors.

Bethencourt remains optimistic despite the bankruptcy. “I don’t think this is the end of the Wild Earth story.”

ChefPaw to Show Off Home Pet Food Maker at CES 2024

While most kitchen tech gadgets at CES this week are for preparing sustenance for two-legged creatures, ChefPaw is explicitly designed to create homemade food for our furry friends.

ChefPaw, which is a creation from the founders of pet health products company Innovet, is essentially something akin to a Thermomix for dog food. The product, for which the company has filed a provisional patent, features a large mixing bowl and a mixing blade, allows pet owners to mix raw ingredients like vegetables and meat. Users follow their own chosen recipes (or recipes provided by ChefPaw), and the device will cook up to six pounds of homemade dog food in about 40 minutes.

You can see the ChefPaw in action below:

If you want to buy a ChefPaw, you will have to be committed to the idea of homemade pet food because it isn’t cheap. The ChefPaw will set you back $639 plus tax and shipping, which isn’t exactly as spendy as a Thermomix, but it’s more than twice as much as a low-end Thermomix clone and 4-5 times that of an Instant Pot, another popular home appliance for making pet food.

But who knows? My guess is there is probably a market for dedicated pet enthusiasts who will spare no expense for their pet on a dedicated pet food maker. If you’re at CES and want to check out the ChefPaw, you can find it in Eureka Park at the Venetian Expo starting January 9th.

CULT Scoops Up Assets From Cultivated Meat Pet Food Startup Because Animals, Fresh Off Investment By Marc Lustig

This week CULT Food Sciences announced it had signed a binding letter to acquire some of Because Animals Inc.’s consumer brand assets, related patents, non-scientific intellectual property, and product formulations.

The acquisition of some of the assets of Because Animals, one of the first startups dedicated to creating pet food using cultivated meat, comes just weeks after CULT announced that Canadian entrepreneur, Marc Lustig, had acquired 15% of the company through the purchase of 27 million shares of CULT. With the deal, Lustig, a cannabis industry executive who sold his company Origin House for $1.1 billion in 2019, becomes CULT’s biggest shareholder. While the terms of Lustig’s investment were undisclosed, 27 million shares of CULT tallied to about ~$2 million based on CULT’s stock price at the time.

While it’s unclear if the two deals were connected, what is clear is the move to bring some of Because Animals’ IP into the fold has been in the works for some time, as it follows the announcement in November that Because Animals’ cofounder, Joshua Errett, was appointed as CULT’s VP of Product. Errett is one of the inventors behind some of the key patents for the company.

With the move, CULT, which describes itself as a company focused on the investment, development, and commercialization of cellular agriculture technologies and products, will expand its products into the pet food space. The company, which also has investments in a variety of different cellular agriculture-based startups, has already launched consumer-facing products such as cell-based coffee and candy.

The terms of the deal involve Further Foods Inc., a subsidiary of CULT, acquiring the assets from Joshua Errett in exchange for a USD$500,000 promissory note bearing interest at 4.35% and an initial 10% ownership stake in Further. Additional ownership stakes in Further will be issued to the vendor based on revenue generated by the assets after the closing of the transaction.

“Eliminating factory-farmed meats in the foods we feed our companion animals will have wide-ranging effects on our society, with ripples through our food chain, economy, and of course, environment,” Errett said in the announcement. “We can reimagine our entire food system, starting with what we put under our dogs’ and cats’ noses every day. I am personally devoted to this cause, as today’s announcement makes clear. I’m looking forward to continuing my important work on this amazing brand.”

But Wait a Minute…

While some of Because Animals’ assets are being sold to CULT, the remaining founder of Because Animals,  Shannon Falconer, made it clear that the company is still a going concern and is still focused on creating cultivated meat-powered pet food.

Falconer and Because Animals sent the following statement to The Spoon, Green Queen and others:

“Cultured meat is what our customers and future manufacturing partners have been asking us for, and this is what we’re prioritizing. The company’s strength is our scientific prowess, and since scientific innovation is key to bringing cultured meat to market, we made the decision to apply laser focus to achieving that feat and to divest ourselves of any and all non-core assets that were not required to realize that objective.” 

“We were surprised to see the announcement by CULT Food Science ‘CULT Food Science Announces Binding Letter of Intent to Acquire Because Animals Consumer Brands and Formulations’ as CULT was at no point involved in our divestiture, nor was Because Animals contacted by CULT prior to their publication. Although it’s not clear from their press release, the consumer brand ‘Because Animals’ was not acquired.” 

“Because Animals retains all of its intellectual property relating to cultured meat – which is our core business – and we are committed to revolutionizing the pet food industry with this technology.”

Because Animals said in the statement the assets heading to CULT were nutritional yeast-based products it discontinued in late 2022. It was these product formulations for these products and two provisional patents related to the discontinued products it agreed to sell Errett. 

Wild Earth Launches Cell-Based Pet Food As It Raises a Fresh $23 Million

Plant-based pet food brand Wild Earth has announced plans to expand its product line into pet food made with cell-based meat. The announcement comes on the heels of a new $23 million funding round from a group of investors that includes Mark Cuban and the star of Vampire Diaries, Paul Wesley.

Led by alternative protein entrepreneur and investor Ryan Bethencourt, Wild Earth has been one of the early leaders in creating pet food from plant-based ingredients. With products like Clean Protein dog food (which uses pea and potato protein) and Superfood Dog Treats With Koji (Koji is a fungi protein used in fermented food in Asia), company sales have grown more than 700% year over year, according to a release sent to The Spoon.

And now, the company plans to use cell-based meat in a new line of products. From the release:

(Wild Earth) has its sights set on adding new products and launching a new initiative into cell-based meat pet food to deepen their market share and gain new customers. Cell-based meat is a lab-grown meat; a sustainable alternative to traditional meat. Cell-based meat is cruelty-free to produce. Cell-based meat is the future of meat, and pet food is leading the revolution!

The company got a boost in 2019 when Bethencourt appeared on Shark Tank and secured a $550 thousand investment from Cuban. Bethencourt, already well-known in the alternative protein space as one of the earliest employees at seminal biotech accelerator IndieBio, became an influential alt-protein evangelist and helped increase Wild Earth’s profile in the market.

Wild Earth is just one of a number of pet food companies eyeing cell-based meat as an ingredient. Startup Because Animals is working on cat food with meat made from mice cells which it plans to have in the market by 2022. Boulder-based Bond Pet Foods has sourced chicken cells from a heritage hen named Inga and plans to roll out pet food using cultured chicken meat in 2023.

And now, we can add cell-based beef and seafood to the list of ingredients coming to the cell-based pet food market. According to the release, Wild Earth plans to have its new lineup of pet food with beef, chicken, and seafood cell-based meat inputs on the market in 2022.

You can see highlights from Bethencourt’s appearance on Shark Tank in the video below:

Mark Cuban Invests In Vegan Dog Food Company Wild Earth

Bond Pet Foods Creates Cultured Chicken Protein Prototype for Pet Nutrition

Don’t worry, animal lovers: No chickens (and by chickens we mean Inga the hen) were hurt in the creation of this dog food.

That’s according to Bond Pet Foods, who announced this week that the company has created what it claims to be the “world’s first cultured chicken meat protein for pet food applications.”

According to the announcement, the company took a “one-time blood sample – in this case, from a heritage hen named Inga who is alive and well at a farm in Lindsborg, Kansas – to determine the genetic code for the best types of chicken proteins to nourish dogs and cats.”

From there, the company’s scientists coupled the genetic code with food grade yeast in a fermentation tank. The end result was animal protein, which Bond’s culinary team used as a novel ingredient in a baked pet treat. The company then tested it with a handful of dogs at their headquarters in Boulder, Colorado.

Bond said that once fully developed, its fermented chicken protein will have the same primary nutrients as conventionally produced chicken meat.

Looking forward, the company hopes to scale up its prototype and plans to work towards bringing products to market based on this new cultured protein by 2023. To help fund this growth, the company also announced they’d closed a bridge round of financing with follow-on from the company’s original seed investors.

While it’s easy for most of us to think of conventionally farmed animal alternatives for human consumption since we see the end product on our plates, the pet food industry is also a massive consumer of factory farmed animal meat. According to a report from iFeeder and the Pet Food Institute, nearly 3.8 million tons of animal-derived ingredients were used in dog and cat food in the US in 2018. Because of this, a new generation of science-forward pet food startups have cropped up in recent years to create new sources of protein for our pets.

In addition to Bond, Wild Earth has developed a line up of pet food with plant-derived protein in the form of a fungi called Koji, while Because Animals, a startup creating both plant-based and cultured protein-based pet food, has already created a cultured-mouse meat prototype for cats.

All of this innovation in pet food protein hopefully means a future where not only our Fido and Felix are happy, but is also good news for the Ingas of the world.