As concerns grow about the climate impact of meat, startups are looking to make more dog and cat foods that are plant-based, made from insects, or lab-grown
Ironically, traditional pet food itself addresses an environmental problem: food waste. Most regular dog and cat food is made with off-cuts and meat byproducts that humans won’t eat. To that end, one huge question mark around “climate-friendly” pet food is the degree to which it is, in fact, climate-friendly — or at least more so than the status quo.
Despite a handful of claims made by individual companies with a vested interest in pushing pet-food alternatives, experts say third-party studies are needed to understand those alternatives’ true emissions impact. The sector’s cheerleaders need only look atRead More:“[We] need some standards for what is climate-friendly,” says Mark Finke, a pet care consultant in Phoenix. “Otherwise, it runs the risk of simply being, however well-intentioned, a slogan or a tagline on a package.
Peter Alexander, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh who has studied the environmental impact of pet food production, says this tension “mimics the same narrative in human food… Using insects is potentially an option, but it depends on what those insects are themselves consuming,” he says.
For now, those questions aren’t stopping one biochemist’s quest to make lab-grown mice meat for cats.Shannon Falconer, co-founder of Vienna-based Because Animals, knows all about skeptical consumers. The startup, which employs people in Austria and the US, once created yeast-based cookies for dogs and supplements made from probiotics for cats, but neither product took off with pet owners.
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