"Rather than slaughtering chickens, Meatly’s scientists extract a sample of cells from a chicken’s egg, which are replicated and grown in vats in a process similar to making beer or yoghurt.... Meatly, which is also planning a product for dogs, hopes to appeal to animal lovers’ environmental conscience, with a growing trend for pet owners to feed their animals a vegan diet.... [Owen Ensor, the founder of Meatly], 35, who is vegan, has tasted his firm’s product. 'It tastes like chicken,' he said.... [H]e does not need to worry about texture, which bothers humans much more than animals. 'Pets care what food smells like and they care what it tastes like, and if it has the right nutrients,' he said. 'But they don’t particularly care what it looks like or if it has the right kind of texture.'... [R]eplicating the correct texture from a vat of cells is tricky."
From
"Britain’s first lab-grown meat: it’s for cats/Tinned chicken cultivated from cells taken from an egg will be marketed to owners who want to supply a normal diet without the guilt. Its vegan creator explains" (London Times).
With cats in the picture, I'm inclined to read "lab-grown" to involve Labrador retrievers.
How does Ensor know cats don't care about texture? But it's not as though traditional cat food is providing the texture I presume cats love (which is the texture of a freshly killed mouse).
By the way, as a human being with a greatly diminished sense of smell (AKA taste), I am overwhelmingly concerned with the texture of food. Food texture matters!
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My daughter’s cat is extremely sensitive to food texture. It will only eat minced or chunky style cat food, and turns its nose up to pâté style food of the same flavor.
It sounds revolting.
I'll wait for the human flavored ones.
At least when Christians try to convert it's to save a soul. When vegans try to convert it's to save a chicken.
Hmmmm. Do chickens have souls? Do vegans?
hmmm...so people go vegan for:
- health
- morality?
I guess it's both, but certainly if it is for health this doesn't fit the bill. It is still protein from animals.
Soon, protein will be piped into people's homes.
Beavis: Yeah, Yeah, are those feces?
Butthead: No ass-wipe, that's meat!
This is coming from the people who, 40 years ago, thought it was a good idea to process ground-up sheep brains and spinal cords into pellets and feed it to cattle as a protein supplement. Google 'mad cow disease' and 'creutzfeldt-jakob' if you don't remember what happened to the cows and the people who ate the cows' flesh.
A good rule of thumb: If the food on your plate was invented in an industrial lab, or came out of something that looks like an insecticide factory, it's not fit for consumption by any living creature. This is especially important for critters like us at the top of the food chain.
I vill not eat ze bugs, und I vill not eat ze franken-fleisch.
Freeze-dried minced mice, the ideal commercial cat food. Cheap, nutritious, and readily available, but no one will ever invest a penny in such a reasonable product because a significant subset of cat owners are fucking lunatics who believe their pets are as enthralled by veganist nonsense as they are.
Writing from ignorance I guess that favoring one texture over another is a learned response. Mammals start out favoring mothers' milk. My recollection of transitioning a child from milk to mush to chunky to chewy appeared to be unpleasant for the child while certainly frustrating for the parent.
Perhaps there are some food scientists at Alpo or Ken-L Ration who can chime in with data.
I don't think cats particularly like the taste of mice. They prefer the taste of fresh,-killed rattlesnake.
Or so my cat tells me.
"because a significant subset of cat owners are fucking lunatics who believe their pets are as enthralled by veganist nonsense as they are."
AWFLs, I believe they're called these days.
I dunno, shouldn’t the cat or dog get to decide if they want to be vegetarian or vegan?
"Meatly, which is also planning a product for dogs"
An unfortunate sentence that scanned, in an article about changing the provenance of meat, as "a product OF dogs"...
Kate, I had the same first reaction.
Our two cats (actually our son's two cats) have vastly different preferences in what they will eat.
I didn't try to dive behind the pay wall, but did the article address price? If cheaper, I'd give it a try. But I'd bet it's way more expensive.
I await the day when Sara McLaughlin puts out a tearful plea for people to adopt those poor, released chickens, sheep, pigs and cows when the vegans get their way.
Soylent Green is PEOPLE!
MFTGA!
This sounds reasonable enough to me. Cats are obligate carnivores, unlike dogs and humans, who are just better off eating meat. It beats starving your cat to the point where it will eat vegetable based food.
Our two cats will only eat pate style Little Friskies. Sad.
This from the BBC:
Aside from the black-and-white nutritional facts, a pet owner’s personal views can come up against specific legislation designed to protect pets’ welfare. “In the UK, under the Animal Welfare Act the owner has the obligation to feed the animal an appropriate diet,” says Daniella Dos Santos, the president of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) “If your personal belief system means you don’t want to eat any animal protein, that’s fine, but that diet is not designed to meet the welfare standards of your pet.
“Cats are obligate carnivores, and they require certain amounts of amino acids to be healthy, and the lack of these can lead to health problems,” says Dos Santos. “For that reason, you wouldn’t advise a vegetarian diet, let alone a vegan one.”
To get my overdose of omega-3 fatty acids I eat lots of tinned sardines canned salmon and canned cod liver bathed in its own oil. I usually mix those three fatty fish sources with a couple cans of tuna for bulk protein.
I can get no other human being to eat this fish compote. However every animal that comes anywhere near this concoction goes absolutely batshit crazy for it.
Oh dear. Anyone who thinks animals don't notice texture has never had a cat.
I, for one, look forward to the ethically sourced, sustainably manufactured human meat. For my cat, of course!
Our own cat has lately refused to eat her (kidney-failure-specific) food unless it comes smothered in churu. (The brand we get is called "Luvsome," but the idea is the same: pureed tuna or salmon or chicken.) I think this is another item from the book Outsmarting Cats. That book opened with a classic example: A cat was dumped outside whenever it started scratching the furniture. So, of course, it started scratching the furniture whenever it wanted to be let outside.
So Lili has realized that we want her to eat the "renal support" food from Royal Canin. But what she really wants is the churu. So she won't eat her "real" food unless it's smothered in churu. Finicky in her old age!
If lab-grown meat is so good, the lab rats who grow it should be able to eat it for a year straight, then come back and say "Please sir, can I have some more?" That lab-meat should be their only source of protein.
Cats do care about texture even when they can't have mouse. The cat food makers offer pate, shreds, chunks, dry food, and a bunch of other options. My cat has her distinct preferences. The main advantage of mice is the fun of the capture and torment.
"Pets care what food smells like and they care what it tastes like, and if it has the right nutrients"
I call bullshit on that bolded portion of his statement.
Studies have been done that show cats care less about flavor than texture. My cats certainly do. But nothing beats a warm vole.
Actually, like Howard, I eat tuna mixed with other tinned fish. Add hot sauce and nutritional yeast and a fist full of onions. Yes, I don't have to share it. But never eat swordfish. Trust me.
My pampered felines DO care about texture. The 2 will not eat Pate type catfood, they only like chucks or shreds with extra gravy. These 2 are not pure bred special cats, I found them in a box outside a Walmart in rural PA. You cannot get much more down to earth than that....
Tina848 said...
"My pampered felines DO care about texture. The 2 will not eat Pate type catfood, they only like chucks or shreds with extra gravy."
My 2 are just the opposite. If we get them the chunky kind, I have to grind the chunks up with a fork and mix it thoroughly.
Consistency is key: They like the type that has the consistency of moist braunschweiger. If we get them the thinner type that has the consistency of mashed potatoes in a cheap TV dinner, they will only eat the minimum amount.
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