🚨 Want access to all of our trends, insights and opportunities?

Amplify-Icon-3

Free Trial

Lab-grown mouse treats for cats, by pet food brand Because Animals

Aiming to halt harm to livestock animals and to the planet, pet food brand Because Animals will soon be launching a lab-grown alternative: Harmless Hunt Mouse Cookies for Cats. 

A bag of Harmless Hunt Mouse Cookies for Cats

The snacks are made with meat grown from mouse cells, which are non-invasively collected from mice in a procedure that Because Animals compares to an ear piercing. Those mice then 'live the rest of their natural lives in the safest, most comfortable habitat available to them.'

Harmless Hunt Mouse Cookies will be available for preorder as soon regulatory reviews allow. As reported by Fast Company, Chicago-based Because Animals is also working on lab-grown rabbit snacks for dogs.

Trend Bite

The need for sustainable pet food is real — research from 2017 estimates that the diet of American dogs and cats constitutes 25–30% of the environmental impacts of animal production. Currently, most kibble is made of slaughterhouse leftovers — the parts of animals that people don't eat. At first glance using leftovers sounds like a sustainable solution, but that secondary market also subsidizes factory farming and its many harmful impacts.

And while Singaporean humans can order lab-grown chicken curry for home-delivery, cultured meat still faces lengthy regulatory reviews in other countries. Those hurdles might be lower for pet food — an opportunity to pounce on first?

Related: New dog food by Chippin uses invasive carp as sustainable source of protein