Hello. It's Anthony Chadwick from the Webinar vet welcoming you to another one of our lunch and learns. I'm really, really excited today to, present and introduce this webinar as chair.
We're going to be talking to the team at MELY. And this is a a really exciting moment to introduce meat le to you. Meat le is, cultivated meat.
So it's not actually, from animal protein as such. It's synthetic meat. Really interesting area.
And we've got two speakers on today. We have Owen Ensor, who was the CEO of meat le And then we've got David de Stefan Nuti, who is the veterinary advisor for meat as well. This is, really the the early part of the journey.
Meat has been going for three years. Was set up by Owen, who has, a background also in working with insect protein. But when Owen, became vegan, he decided that, he was becoming increasingly, nervous or not as keen at working with insects anymore.
So he decided How could he set up a company that was, truly sustainable from a meat perspective and has come up with the concept of meat. Le I'm really excited to hear from both speakers. Owen is going to introduce Meely to us more formally first, and then David as the, vet will go into more of the scientific details.
So Owen daa really, pleased to have you both on the webinar, and I'm looking forward to, listening and learning Perfect. Thank you very much, Anthony. And thank you all for joining us today.
We're incredibly excited to share a bit more about meat le about cultivated meat and about a lot of the testing and analysis that we've done on our product so far. So let us jump in. I'm gonna start.
I'll give you a kind of a brief intro and overview. for about 20 minutes into what meaty and cultivated meat. And then David will take you through some of the very exciting analysis we've been doing both feeding trials and lab analysis.
But I wanted to start by giving you a bit more of a introduction into me. So to take you back a few years, to a small community outside of Edinburgh in Scotland. That's where I grew up with my beloved family cat, Smokey Jones.
And I had a very traditional upbringing. I ate meat every meal, as did Smokey. And it was many years later, after I'd got married and made my own home that my wife and I welcomed our own kittens, Lamu and Zanzi into our house.
And it was at this point that I really started to think what is, the combination of what our pets eat? What we eat and the impact on other animals and our planet are all interconnected. What David then told me was one health concept.
And so I started to look for solutions. And, as Anthony said, I was starting off in insect protein. Also looked at plant based foods and plant based diets, but quickly realised that the most exciting potential for a healthy, sustainable and kind future was by creating cultivated meat.
And so that's why I started mely three years ago alongside one of our investors, Arons and I wanted to introduce you to the rest of the team. So we are a team of 11 based here, all in the UK in London. Various experiences across biology and chemistry.
Maybe just to call out, my co-founder Hilda, Who's our chief science officer? He has 25 years experience with cell biology as a PhD in cell biology and as a few of the world's first patents in cultivated meat as well, I'll let David introduce yourself as well. Thank you.
Yes. I graduated in veterinary medicine in Italy, University of Padua in 2019. And then I did a PhD in the same university, and I spent the first half of the PhD studying micro algae.
And then I moved to Tufts University Centre for several agriculture, to spend the second half of my PhD working on cultivating meat and then join first as a visiting PhD student and then as the veterinary nutritionist advisor. I joined Miley, back, one year and a half ago. Yeah, and just to give you a bit more background about meat, le So we were established in 2022.
As I mentioned, we're based here in the UK. Our initial product is going to be chicken. So we're calling it meaty chicken, and we are a member of UK pet Food, formerly known as the Pet Food Manufacturers Association.
I'm also a member of Basan, so we have strong industry engagement as well. And I'm excited to tell you all that UK pet food is currently preparing a one page overview of cultivated meat that they're aiming to release in the next 4 to 6 weeks. So we're excited to see, that they're engaging in this topic as well.
So we're covering kind of three main things today. One is what is cultivated meat, which I know is a question many of you might have. Why do we need cultivated meat?
How can it help us as an industry? And finally is meaty chicken safe, nutritious and tasty. So I'll take you through the first two and then David, I'll take you through the last more data intensive, aspect.
So what is cultivated meat? Cultivated meat also has many names. So to avoid confusion, we call it cultivated meat.
It's also known as cultured meat lab grown meat, cell based meat. They are all the same thing, and they all follow a very basic, process of, production. So First of all, you collect cells.
This can come from any animal. It can be different types of cells for us at meat. We take those from a chicken egg.
You take a single sample of cells from one egg one time and you put those in a container. And so they're very similar to fermentation vessels. Many of us here will drink beer or eat yoghurt.
And so this is very similar to how that is made. We're just using animal cells instead of yeast or bacteria. So we put them in these sterile containers.
We add high quality nutrients. These are all food safe nutrients that we're adding. The cells metabolise those and double as all cells do.
And once they've consumed the nutrients, they create healthy, sustainable meat. And we sell that to pet food manufacturers. So we are selling it to them to make the delicious, healthy meals that our pets enjoy.
So it'll end up looking exactly like traditional pet food. It just has this different ingredient as part of it. And that is the process, that we follow in the process that many other cultivated meat companies have, in terms of what it looks like, which is often a question we get.
You can see one of my other cat Zanzi here enjoying, his cultivated meat. This is meaty chicken. It has a very similar colour to chicken.
It has a kind of pate consistency. And according to Zanzi and Lamu, it's incredibly tasty. And we can add other types of meat.
We will add other types of meat. But for now, we're just very focused on our chicken ingredients. And as mentioned, we sell out B to B two pet food manufacturers.
And maybe just to give a kind of a bit of broader context, cultivated meat really came to the fore about 10 years ago. There's about 100 and 50 companies globally focused on cultivated meat. About 100 and 45 of those are focused on human food, and there's a handful of us focused on pet food.
Has already been approved for human consumption in the US Singapore and as of last week, also Hong Kong, and in the UK, it is a huge government priority. So if anything, you paid very close detail to the budget. In October.
You'll see they're talking about biotechnology, about innovation and cultivated means becoming a key part of the government's industrial strategy. And the Food Standards Agency is now prioritising a kind of fast track approval process for cultivated meat, and it's taking 1 to 2 years to, figure out exactly how best to regulate it before putting that in place. I'm very excited to share that.
As of July this year, Meat le became the first company to get approval for cultivated meat as pet food. And this followed a very lengthy process with, Dra, the Food Standards Agency and a PH a engaged, all of them intensively over about a 2.5 year period.
Shared a lot of our data and information with them. They've also conducted numerous lab visits. And as with all meat in pet food, it is a category three animal by product.
It is listed on the GB feed register, and our facility is approved for, animal by-product handling and has also been approved by trading standards. So we've followed a very similar process. And it has all the certification.
The traditional meat in pet food would, and that is the first time in Europe that any cultivated meat has been approved. And it's the first time in the world that a, pet food product, cultivated meat for pet food has been approved. And so we also wanted to share a lot of that information, around the safety and nutrition with you and the rest of the vet community.
I want to continually do that. So this is the starting point of our, intention to continually share, with you and the rest of that community. And finally, we also have great technology.
So I know one of the other questions is what is the cost of cultivated Mean? Isn't it too expensive? So, the technical term the media that we, have is is the name for the nutrients that we're feeding the cells.
Those are normally incredibly expensive, but we have managed to reduce the cost of those by about 2000 times. And that means that scale we can aim to produce cultivated meat at under five pounds per kilogramme. And all of the nutrients we use are food safe They're sterile ingredients, and so that it can take you through the kind of safety aspects of that.
The one caveat I would say is currently we produce very small quantities. So we, as mentioned, it's kind of a nascent industries. So we're producing small quantities today, but over the next few years want to start scaling that rapidly?
We will do a very small product launch early next year, as a starting point and a showcase of what can happen, in the pet food industry and so taking us through then and also, if there's any questions, on more in depth on what cultivated meat is, please feel free to put those in the chat. And hopefully we'll have 15 to 20 minutes at the end to, answer any of those questions. But I also want to discover why do we need cultivated meat?
It's obviously a very intriguing technology, but why is it that this can help us? First of all, just to highlight, there is huge demand for cultivated meat. So this is external academic research showing Would you feed cultivated meat to your pets?
80% of people are open to that. There's a chunk of that who are enthusiastic already saying yes, and there's some who are uncertain, which is completely fair enough given, we're the first company to explain what cultivated meat is and why it could be great for your pets to to eat cultivated meat. But there is clear demand.
And I think one of the reasons we're so excited about cultivated meat and about feeding it to our own pets is because it fits perfectly into the one health approach. And so it can really help address each of these, aspects which we know are challenges both globally and fast, in the pet and vet communities. And so I'll take you through each of those, one by one.
Firstly, cultivated meat does not harm animals, so we take a single sample of cells from one egg one time, and after that, we never use another animal product ever again. So it is one single sample from one egg, and we can create an infinite amount of meat for evermore. Those nutrients that I mentioned, we don't use any foetal bovine serum, or F BS as it's known.
We don't use any other types of serum in our production process. And we don't use any animal components whatsoever aside from that single sample of cells one time. And so that means, yeah, we can reduce a lot of, harm and suffering for other animals while feeding our pets.
Secondly, there are public health advantages we know globally that antibiotic use in animal agriculture is a huge issue. With about 70% of antibiotics used in animal agriculture. We do have a reference slide at the end that we can share that has all the sources for these, that is global antibiotic use of 70%.
But we also know in the UK that faecal samples from dogs have shown that there's a significant quantity of antimicrobial resistance, in the stool samples of those dogs, which is concerning for the pets and concerning for us as, individuals around those pets as well. What is great about cultivated meat is we don't use any antibiotics again at any point in our production process, and so we can help prevent the spread of antimicrobial resistance. There's also kind of practical and commercial benefits.
So from a supply chain perspective, these are, data from the UK government on pet food and meat. Production. So in the last 20 years, meat production has increased about 20%.
But pet food has grown over 50%. I'm sure you're all aware of that. The pet industry, just keeps booming.
And so that is expected to continue. But meat production now in the UK, is starting to plateau. Meat consumption is plateauing.
So we have this increasing gap between what our pets demand and what we can create, and so we can help fill that gap with cultivated meat. We're a very robust supply chain. We can create cultivated meat anywhere.
Because it is not dependent on the land that we have. So we can help resolve some of these supply chain issues as well. Finally, on sustainability, we're all very aware that our own CO2 impact and how much meat we're consuming, is a potential challenge.
And so the average European is eating about 52 kilogrammes of meat per year. What some of us may not be aware of is that the average Labrador actually eats about 75 kilogrammes of meat a year. So about 50% more, than its owner.
And so that pet food, consumption is a huge sustainability challenge as well. And one of the key advantages of cultivated meat is that we can use dramatically fewer resources. Typically, there's many different ways of growing meat of creating meat.
But typically it's taking soya from Brazil fish meal from Peru and Chile, and transporting those, to Europe, making pet pet food and then feeding it to the pets. That is very intensive. Process versus cultivated meat can be very, lo location specific so we can create it.
Here in the UK, we can get all of the components here in the UK. That means we use 75% less land. We can use up to 90% less water and 60% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, so as well as additional benefits like acidification and nutrition, to preventing those nutrients spilling off into our environment.
So that means there's more water and land for us as humans, but also for other animals for wildlife. And we can reduce a lot of those impacts that we're seeing around the world. So that's a brief run through of what cultivated meat is the kind of why we're so excited about it.
And now I'll pass over to, David A to take you through some of the, very specific analysis that we've been doing. And then we'll wrap up into questions from you. Yes.
So in the last couple of years we collected, we have collected a very extensive body of evidence about, meat chicken. So let's go through it. Starting with the most important aspect, which is the safety analysis, in bad food.
Naturally, we have two main type categories of hazards which are the microbiological and the chemical ones. And me chicken has been through, a real extensive analysis on both of these sides. And we're going to go, we're going to go through each one of them one by one.
But first of all, I want to highlight what is the key concept about, food safety and cultivated meat Because of the production process, which is very controlled in a bioreactor? Every food safety potential issue is related to the input in the bio reactor. So whatever you put in, you have to deal with once you take the cultivated meat out.
So it's very important to focus on what goes into the bio actor. And, if you take an approach of eliminating the risk in the input, then you won't have to deal with the risk at the output. Which basically means that every cultivated meat product, should be, evaluated by itself because cultivated meat is a broad category.
But depending on how it is produced, then it could have different food safety issues. And the way that Miley has approached this is by taking the path of avoiding the food safety issues to begin with by eliminating the risk at the input club. So basically meaty chicken is use without steroids without hormones.
There is no animal origin media components that goes into, the bioreactor, so that really only animal part are the chicken cells. There is no genetic engineering whatsoever. If someone you are familiar with cultivated meat, you may have heard about the use of scaffolds or micro carriers.
That can help for the three dimensional structure, especially for cultivated meat for human production. But in me chicken there is no scuff carrier. So we eliminated another possible layer of risk in terms of food safety.
And, of course, the entire production process is sterile. So there is no microbiological contamination in the final product. And let's start, go through each one of the key food safety points starting from the microbiological one.
We know that microbiological contamination is a care skin pet. Food is the number one cause of pet food records globally. And, we've done a very, very, very, extensive analysis on this on this product here.
We can see just three samples from our safety do here, but we've done much more and, we've not found ones, bacteria in amount superior to the minimum limit of quantification. So we we never found, the bacterias that, are regulated in the EU and the UK in our product. So our product, at the end, after the harvesting is the factor a sterile product, and then let's go through the other side of the food safety potential, hazards, which are the chemical ones?
The chemical ones, starting with the allergens. So we know that in pet food, there is a lot going on, in terms of trend of single protein pet food. But this is also a necessity for certain animals, As you know, very well in terms of needing, a diet, that is, that is completely lacking certain allergens.
Because dogs and cats may have all, allergic reactions or may have food intolerance towards certain protein sources. And unfortunately, we do have, multiple papers in the literature that highlight that, there are many products out there that, do not report, all the list of ingredients, in the label. And that is an inherently pro a problem when we are talking about conventional, animal, product production, because it's lotter, ais and, facilities where the animal by products are processed.
It's very common to have, a mix up of different protein sources. And, the great advantage of cultivated meat because of the control production process is that you know that the only allergen that you will find in the product is in case of meat. Chicken is just the chicken, as the PC R analysis here showed, indicate very well.
So looking at the more, environmental related chemical risk. We have, of course, heavy metals who are, quite a, under under evaluated, problem in path food. But we have multiple, scientific papers, publications in the last few years that have highlighted how, this is a problem in many, many, bad food on the market.
This is a paper that show that literally all the samples that they tested at Mercury over the maximum limit. And there are, this was this was in South America. But we have papers about Europe.
We have papers about the US that show similar results. And, the problem here is the B accumulation of heavy methods that can be prevented in cultivated meat if, input. So the media component, that are used in the process do not contain significant amounts of heavy metals.
So once again, it's always important to evaluate the product at hand. There are publications out there about cultivated meat, product for human food that do show a higher amount of heavy metals, but in metallic chicken. In this product, we have literally all the heavy metals, orders of magnitude below, the maximum limit tolerated in, impact food.
According to the EU regulation, another bio accumulation risk is represented by dioxins and P CBS, which are also regulated. And these are a very, very high number of compounds that can potentially be contained in meat. And we've tested for all of this.
And once again, because of the control input, they were all, orders of magnitude below the limit of quantification or the maximum, tolerated amount impacted. Another important, hazard in pet food are veterinary drugs. we know that in the US, 27% of pet food records are due to veteran drug res.
And, once again because I met you at the input level, there is no veterinary drugs used whatsoever. Of course, at the output in the cultivating me, there is not going to be any veterinary drug. But we've all proven this with analysis.
That show, literally no, veterinary drug is present in the product. And, another important aspect to consider Where, me chicken and cultivated meat can, really have significant advantages. Is the shelf life, and once again, we are looking both at the microbiological and chemical side.
So when we are looking at the bacterial growth we've saw cultivated, chicken at four °C up to nine months, and we've never detected any bacterial growth. And, we are a few weeks away to do the 12 months. So the one year, time point.
And, we do not expect to have, different results, which means that the product is, microbiological, stable and sterile. We know of up until nine months, and we'll soon be able to show, until one year after production one store at four °C, which for a meat product is really, really, incredible. And, we've also done oxidative analysis about lipid oxidation.
Looking at the Tartu acid reactive substances test, which is? And of the Lita when it comes down to lipid oxidation. And we've seen that, there are negligible amount of lipid oxidation in the product.
Consider that the, lava above which you start to have significant lipid oxidation is two milligrammes of malo dead per kilogramme. And once again, there are products out there. I've I've personally done my undergraduate thesis on this, and we've in in that study, we've we've, We looked at, many pet food products on the market, and we've seen a significant number of them at a high level of lipid ation in it.
But, cultivating me again until six months, we have seen no significant lipid oxidation. And we'll redo this test again at 12 months, and we do not expect different results. So this is the summary of all the testing we've done from the MACROLOGY and the chemical perspective.
And all this very extensive body of evidence and knowledge is what allowed cultivated meat, meat, chicken to be the first global, product to be to be regulatory approved for sale for pet food. But we also look very extensively at the nutritional analysis from the proximate analysis to all the nutrients category. And we have a product that is MM.
84% moisture and around 7.5% protein. And this is the key component of the product.
This is what the product wants to deliver, healthy protein for pets with around 1% of fat. And this is, in my opinion, the key slide. The key, the key, analysis about mile is the mino acid profile.
I personally remember the first time I saw this. I was really, really happy to see it because it's, completely completely similar to the amino acid profile of an actual chicken breast on the higher, higher quality cut of chicken. Which basically means that there is no limiting amino acid.
We also have touring in the product. And so we have a complete amino acid, spectrum, literally just like chicken breast. We've also, however, have other important nutrients contained in the product.
Even if the focus is on protein, we also have fatty acids with, fatty acid profile quite similar to chicken to chicken breasts. Mainly, we are having mono saturated fatty acids in the product. The main fatty acids, it like acid, just like in chicken breasts.
As for the essential amino acid, fatty acids in, for pets for dogs and cats. The amount here are lower, but this is not the focus of this product. But I do want to say that, there is high high, space for nutritional enhancement when it comes to fatty acids.
Because depending on the fatty acids that you are using in the media, you can implement higher concentration of these fatty acids in the final product of potential in the future, if you're focusing on it, you could have a cultivated chicken with a very high content of omega three. And then we have the micronutrients, because by again the focus is on the protein. The product also contains significant amount and can help, reach, the the requirement of, multiple micronutrients, including sodium potassium chloride.
As for the minerals, iron and zinc, as for the trace elements, and we have all the spectrum of the B vitamins and in particular benign and B 12 are really containing high amounts. There is, of course, no calcium in, no significant amounts of calcium in the product because there is no bones. So that's that's the difference with the chicken meal.
There we have, we will have the bones of the animals here. We have no bones, and that's why we there's there's no significant amount of carbs. We also have, started to conduct digest stability analysis.
These were in vitro digest analysis that compare, a fresh chicken base, dog food, wheat or without 4% of cultivating meaning cultivated meat. Inclusion 4% because that is the level that is going to be used, in the initial product release. And we basically have, no significant difference between these two.
Product in terms of inventory digestibility and, protein digest total digestibility protein, digestibility, fat digestibility and mineral digestibility. And these, these were the first, digestibility analysis and more digestibility analysis are going to be conducted, in the future, in vivo as as well, And this year, we've also conducted the first ever feeding trials, of creativity, meat globally in any species, it was It was conducted on dogs with the help of the contract research, company treat therapeutics. And, we are very, very happy of of of, the results of these trials.
They were conducted in the UK. And what we used was a complete fresh dog food that was plant based. But then we included 4% of cultivated meat, making it the main ingredient, the number one ingredient in the formulation.
And we actually conducted two trials 11 day study with 19 dogs that were fed the product containing cultivated meat for both meals of the day and then a two week control study with six dogs eating the product with cultivated meat and six dogs eating the fully 100% plant-based diet as control. These were, at trial. Both trials conducted at at home setting and the outcomes were on a reported outcomes, plus the veterinary trial visits to assess the potential adverse reactions and the palatability of the product.
The tradeoffs were conducted in the UK with 60 applications in just a few days, and we end up selecting 31 UK privately owned dogs around four years of million age 14 different breeds. A very broad spread of baseline diets, including raw meat based diets and a very high compliance with just two dogs lost in the one day trial to follow up, and just one dog who didn't participate in the T visit in the two week trial and these were the results. So we did not notice any, any adverse reactions.
The only issue we had was in the chewy group. Where one dog? She showed, diarrhoea and low energy for a few days.
But this started at the very at the very beginning of the trial. Basically, in the two weeks of the trial, the second week was fully 100% the the the trial diet, while for the first week, we had an adaptation period of the first two days 25% of the new food and 77 75% of their of their normal diet. And then we went the third and the fourth day 5050 the S, the fifth and the sixth day, 75% of the new diet and 25% of the whole diet.
And from the seventh, they they were, being fed completely. The, trial diet. And this dog had a little bit of problem with diarrhoea and low energy from the adaptation fields.
And the problem here was this was a dog that was used to eat a raw, meat based diet. And then it was transitioned to a predominantly plumbing diet really, really high reaching fibre. And this, of course, was a hard transition.
We've, we've not seen any significant number of vomiting events, just two vomit events. It's two different dogs. You know, more than 100 overall days of feeding.
And these, of course, were at home those that had access to outside. So there was no correlation. Between these vomiting events and the food consumption, and we also did not notice any significant difference in the store consistency.
I bet there was a softening that we detect in the chewy Group. But once again, this was, pretty understandable, considering that all dogs increase, quite substantially the amount of fibre in the diet when moving to a diet. It's really rich in plant based ingredients.
We had very good results in terms of the palatability was literally not drop out due to low palatability, while the entire placebo group dropped out due to the low palatability. In the case of the fully 100% plant based diet, and we have 75% owners reported a higher enjoyment than their baseline diet, and 75% of the dogs, showed a fast consumption behaviour pattern, meaning they started eating the food immediately, or just a few seconds after, the owner put down the ball. So the conclusion of these trials are that most dogs that consume a plant-based diet with me cultivated chicken contain a 4% inclusion rate as main ingredients in the formulation for up to two weeks show high palatability and no dogs showed human detect adverse reaction.
Now, these were the first ever, trial of cultivated meat. So of course, there's a lot more to be done and to research about, but I want to highlight how, the results of both of the trials and, the data analysis on the food are going to be published in PVI articles, and we are going to continue to collect evidence via long and short term feeding trials. So if you look at the focus point where we can, do more trials differently, we can do longer trial.
The trials we have conducted was just human reported outcomes. And of course, the next step is to do biological samples Analysis via randomised control trial with, a simple size calculated, with the appropriate statistical power. And we can also, of course, var, change Vary the inclusion rate of cultivated meat in the product tested.
And, we started with dogs, but we already planned feeding trials for cats, but, cats have already tried the product. You can see here How, when cats really, really enjoying the cultivated meat? In this case, it was really just raw cultivated meat.
And they they they really loved it. So to to conclude, Owen, you you explained very well how cultivated meat has a lot of advantages in terms of sustainability and animal welfare. And, with meat chicken in particular, a large body of evidence has been collected to demonstrate the safety and the nutritional quality of the product.
Which is why, together with the fact that it has been successfully fed to dogs in short term feeding trials. This is why meal chicken has been approved for using pet food in the UK. And next year, the first dog food containing me chicken will be, will be for sale in the UK market.
Perfect. Thank you. David.
In. Thank you. Yeah, all for listening and attending.
Hopefully that gives you an overview of of again. Why we're excited about it and all of the testing and analysis that we've done. I would just emphasise that we hope this is the start of our process of bearing information with vets.
And we would love to do more webinars, over the next six or 12 months and keep you updated as we do more analysis and feeding trials and findings. But I will pause there. I'm just gonna very quickly flash up the references slide if anyone wants to screenshot it.
These slides will also be available after if anyone wants to take a look and dig into things in a lot of detail, but otherwise, so there's a lot of comments and questions coming in. So, Anthony, I'll hand back over to you and please. Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks, Owen. Thanks, David de.
For a fantastic presentation. We have got quite a lot of questions, so I'll dive into those. James is asking.
You mentioned scaling your business as a challenge. What's needed to increase the scale of production. So it's It's mainly at the moment getting bigger vessels, basically, so getting bigger tanks that we can put the, that we can put the cells into, so we're still at relatively small scale.
Hopefully, next year we'll start scaling, and we need investment to do that. So we're in a continual process of obviously proving out certain progress and then raising more money to allow us to scale. So hopefully, by the end of next year, we will have an exciting update on our increased scale that we're reaching fantastic.
I think James is another question you said you mentioned. Consumers are willing to feed cultivated meat. What messaging marketing messages do you feel can effectively encourage consumers to adopt cultivated meat as a viable and desirable food?
Are there any barriers? I mean, I think the barrier is people not knowing what it is. There's a lot of social commentary around cultivated meat or lab grown meat, but not many people really know what it looks like, how it's made all of these aspects and so that's really what we're a key part of.
Our role is kind of demystifying the whole process, and I think when you explain to people we're not using any steroids or hormones or antibiotics, and we're not using any genetic modification. And, you know, the process is the product is sterile. So reduces the contamination risk.
And it's just chicken that we're making. And people and people and their pets are able to start tasting it. I think I hope that that will overcome any hesitations that people have.
Zeke, made the comment question. Can you please share the full nutrient breakdown of meat, chicken, amino acids, et cetera? Which David?
You obviously did. I mean it It from an amino acid profile. It it, looks like chicken, presumably viewing it.
It looks like chicken. But, David, you know, the the true scientists always truly test the product. Have you eaten it yet?
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. II.
I always remember the day I first hit it because, personally, I've been a vegan for yeah, 10 years. And I've hit all the plant based chicken on the market because IIII I just love the taste. I just didn't want to eat, for environmental and animal welfare reasons.
And, yes. It's, it's the taste is just It's just unbelievable. Like chicken.
It tastes like chicken as well. This is This is the question I had. So thank you for bringing it up.
And I've been cheeky enough to answer it. So true. Scientist David Day.
You You have tested the product, and I presume I in as CEO. You too have done it as well. Yeah, Yeah, I have, it tastes great.
It tastes just like chicken. And more importantly, my two cats have tasted it as they say. They really love it.
And I sound very biassed when I say that they haven't told you it tastes like chicken. Presumably they haven't told me that specifically, but I could see the desire in their eyes. Acid profile.
I've showed essential amino acids because from the nutritional perspective, that's what we focus on from a nutritionist, of course. But the the entire amino acid profile. Even when we are considering the non-essential fatty and non essential amino acids, it's it's very similar to cultivated chicken, Of course, the non-essential, amino acids, they they are also important.
They contribute to the palatability aspect. So yeah, I mean, that amino acid profile was quite remarkable. Really.
I think that's, yes, a fabulous slide. And Stanislav would like to ask about the method of immortal organisation of the chicken cells. Yeah, they are spontaneously immortalised.
And these are cells that have been approved for human consumption in the USA, and they've also been used in vaccine production and cellular therapies. They're one of the most robust, safe, cell lines, that are available. And again, those are spontaneously immortalised.
So we're not using any genetic modification or engineering, to do that, but it allows us just to take a single sample of cells. So it is the, highest welfare type of sound line that you can use as well. And from a production perspective, having a consistent, sound that you can use is also important.
So they're just all around a great, starting point for us. Yeah. The question here, which, which I will read out, is from an anonymous attendee.
But my understanding is obviously the meat is the cultivated meat is always going to be added to a vegan source rather than to ordinary meat if you like. But I'll I'll read this question out. So you can you can give it your answer.
I understand that cultivated meat would help with the antibiotic resistance and also would avoid contamination in the final product. But I think this would only be if the product was made solely with the cultivated, cultivated meat rice. And in the beginning that this would be very difficult because the price of the novel protein what rate of inclusion do you envision to have in a dry dog food?
For example, do you aim to replace all the animal protein? So, I mean, we're as I mentioned, we're selling B to B. So we sell to pet food manufacturers.
So that is a conversation with them, depending on what their product range is. The formulation, how we're targeting the diet, et cetera, on the antimicrobial resistance, it's always better to have less antibio antibiotics used than more. So I think in whatever quantity we're using, cultivated meat would be beneficial and and have some impact.
We would primarily look to having this included in a plant based diet, but again, that's a ongoing conversation. And I think it depends on consumer reaction as well. If you have?
I don't know. Yes, I think that explains it perfectly. Cultivated meat when we're talking about cultivated meat into pet food and to be honest in human food as well, for a while, we look at it as as a raw ingredient to be incorporated into a hybrid product.
Now, the final product, whether you want to be a hybrid with just plant based or or wheat conventional meat or with insect like those are conversations that also have a commercial, a commercial side to it, in terms of the public health advantages. Like, we're literally talking about a products form without antibiotics, and a product that once we are using it in, for example, in an I product with plant based sources, of course, it will, it will drastically reduce the likelihood of, contamination and of detecting antimicrobial resistance in the faces of the animals to consume the product there. There's a few people asking questions.
Which producers are you collaborating with? But I presume you want that. That's kind of more commercial and more private at the moment.
And so we will. Sorry. Go on.
Owen. No, I was just gonna say that is I mean, we work with a variety of producers. That's everyone from large multinationals to to small start ups.
And those have different pros and cons. But we're working across the industry, and that includes Yeah, fresh, dry, wet. At the moment primarily, you know, we're sharing samples.
People are in product development as we're doing with the vet community. Now, we're doing a similar thing with, manufacturers of just getting them used to it, seeing how they could use it. You know how they want to do that, and we'll be doing this small product release.
In February next year. And I would say that pets at home, who everyone's probably very familiar with, have invested in meat directly. So they're one of our commercial partners as well, and just, a realistic timeline.
It it sounds like, obviously, starting at the beginning of the year. By the end of the year, perhaps with another webinar, we'll know where we're up to. Perhaps with some products beginning to appear at that time.
There may be some products beginning to appear. I think the challenge for us is it's really kind of a It's not a continual process. It's a step change, depending on larger equipments and larger facilities.
To see consistent product at commercial scale is probably 3 to 5 years. And and as you say at the moment, you are a B to B business. So you're helping pet food companies to look at an alternative?
Yeah, and I think a lot of them have tried plant based and they've tried insect based. And there's been challenges around consumer acceptance. You know, different nutritional constraints.
And so a lot. We see a lot of excitement around cultivated meat for the reasons we've shared over the last half hour or so. You know our ability to solve a lot of those one health challenges while providing high quality nutrition.
Fantastic. Veto is asking, is the 4% of the final product the result of fat muscle cells co cultures, or is this just muscle cells? So this is just, it's essentially muscle cells, but there is some fat contained within those, so that 4% is just the the chicken cells starting at 4%.
But the intention is obviously to go at a at a higher inclusion rate. The 4% allows us to make the most of the limited product we have available at the moment. Fantastic.
Have you tested for heat resistance for future use in dry kibble? Yeah, we've done a lot of product functionality testing. So, heat, resistance, water absorbency, the modification, different dynamics like that to see how it might react.
And one of the kind of product development trials that we're looking to do early next year is, putting it through a kibble production process and, testing the end product and seeing cos I think that's where you really get the The proof is in the in, the in the kibble. In this circumstance, Jennifer is asking, what does it look like? Will it come as different shapes for feeding as treats or in food dispensers such as treat pulls?
Yeah, So a lot of that will be in the pet food production process. What we're doing here is the meat production, and then we're selling it to pet food manufacturers so it can come dry, wet, fresh and different shapes and sizes, just depending on what production process do you then put it in? And one of the negatives of Webinars is you never hear the tumultuous applause when you finish your, presentations.
But Domenico wanted to say, thank you for the interesting webinar. How are the nutrients needed by the cells to grow sourced? And that was the chicken egg, wasn't it?
Oh, the nutrients. Sorry. What are the nutrients that you're using?
Yeah. So they're I mean, a lot of our technology originally comes from the biopharmaceutical industry. And the original nutrients you get are incredibly high quality farmer grade nutrients.
We're now sourcing a lot of food grade, so there's similar nutrients. Those are amino acids, vitamins, minerals, that are already used in food production. So everything we're using is already used in food production elsewhere.
We're just combining that to provide the nutrients to the cells. Yeah, Charlotte's asking an interesting question. Just about the the the size of the this isn't really a hydrolysed diet as such as it because you've not smashed it up into small pieces.
So she's saying, Do you know the molecular weight D in the size of the cultivated meat. Could using chicken limit the amount of pets that could have this due to intolerance and and allergies. Unless the molecular weight is small enough.
This is, this is not a neutralised, product the moment you you harvesting and you have to. But you can after, in the processing, phase of the final path for use Canyon, go through that process to have at the end of the day at the end of the process a product that is hydro. I think the key aspect from this So from this perspective, this is a raw ingredient.
And then if you visualise it and if you hydro the final product, you will have that. But the key benefit, in my opinion, from from this perspective, is the fact that you have a product that you know is just chicken. It just contains the chicken allergens.
It's it's nothing else. And and that's the key aspect. And now it's chicken.
In the future, it could be something else. But you know that this ingredient is it's pure chicken, isn't it? In that sense, while while we you know, if you go and look at the literature we have, like more than 10 papers that have looked at ized diets or or or diets that are supposed to be for, animal suffers from, food intolerances and allergies.
And, there there's been, there's been there's been significant difference between the food, the the ingredients that are reported on the label and those that are actually found on the analysis. And that's why sometimes you move a dog, you know, you change the diet, and it's a dog that suffers from from, for example, beef, beef intolerance or allergy. And you change the diet to something that should be beef free.
But the the the food adverse reaction they continue. And you wonder why. And and sometimes the reason is that it's still actually consuming that, because it's harder to control when we are talking about conventional meat.
Because since lot is it, it happens Like, it happens that you have mixed up, of the different, raw ingredients. And this this does not happen with cultivated. And some somebody again anonymous, want to stay under the radar.
It's really good that you're sharing so much. So I really appreciate that. Both of you.
But, you mentioned there's no calcium in the food. Do dogs and cats not require calcium in their diets? Of course, they require calcium in their diet.
This is not, a full, complete diet. This is But even if you just take any meat at all, you just feed the meat to the dog. It's not a complete diet.
You need to balance the diet. So all the essential nutrients are present in significant amounts. There is no There is no significant amount of calcium because there is no bones, no bones.
And of course, in the final pet formulation, if you are doing a complete diet, you will have to to with the other ingredients to to add some calcium and some of the other micronutrients, and fatty acids. This is a raw ingredient to be used in a final pet food formulation, and there is no meat cultivated or not that can provide all essential nutrients for a dog or a cat. And Dominico has asked a question.
I perhaps would have asked as well. But there's been so many really good questions. I haven't had to step in and think of one.
He said, did you evaluate the carbon footprint of your product compared to traditional meat? And I know you mentioned about the, you know, the the three kilogrammes of CO2 versus nine versus 99. Is there any more information on that?
Yeah. A. As mentioned, there's a number of cultivated meat companies globally.
Some of those have done life cycle analysis on their processes which show similar dramatic, reductions across. Yeah, those sustainability categories. So land, water CO2.
We, as mentioned, kind of, we're continually changing our process. We're about to go to a larger facility. When we have that in place, we will do a life cycle analysis, because if we did one now, it would be out of date by the time we had the results.
So we're in such an iterative process that, we're incredibly excited to do one. We expect the results to be, you know, in that similar range to to what other companies have have done that shows, but particularly because we're using food grade ingredients. And we've removed a lot of the complex processes and steps that other cultivated meat companies are doing.
But actually, I think we'll probably have one of the most sustainable cultivated meat products. Fantastic. Thanks, Erin.
And obviously you You've used the stat during the talk 52 kilogrammes of meat that a European human eats each year. But a Labrador eats 74 kilogrammes. And the question again, coming in on anonymously is what proportion of that in the Labrador is by-product, such as lungs and how much is meat that might otherwise have gone into the human food chain?
So with the, that is the product of analysis specifically, conducting using UK data and they are considered literacy literally all meat, from meat in dry pet food, wet pet food, homemade diet, raw, meat based diet. You know, we do know that we have data from the US that shows that, 48% of meat used in pet food is actually meat fit for human consumption. So there is basically this trend of humanization in the past.
It used to be that the meat path was just the by product not used, not consumed by human. It's not like that anymore, but because owners want higher quality product, and but because there is, there is actually the the the part of animal by product that are used that are destined that are target for pet food are around actually less than 25% of animal by products. They have a lot of wide variety of other other uses.
And so, yeah, we we know that it's in the US. It is about 50% of the meat. Using pet food is, is fit for human consumption.
Yeah, on that supply chain, challenge. I sure, that slide of the kind of gap between pet food and meat production. And we've heard anecdotally, you know, people saying they are worried they're not gonna be able to get enough meat.
And the only option is to start competing with the human food chain. It's a situation we obviously we all want to avoid, you know, our pets competing with our supply chain and us raising animals specifically to feed pets. So you know that data is is challenging to get there's academic sources that say 50% already, but it's certainly an increasing challenging issue for the pet food industry.
Fantastic. And one last question from Michelle, she says, Will you be working with vendors in the USA? We are starting conversations with the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration in the USA.
We have some kind of R and D customers, in the USA and Canada. But this is a solution that can be applied anywhere in the world. You know, it's very easy for us to set up new facilities in other places.
It's just going through that regulatory process, which does differ in each different territory. At the moment that is specific to the UK. We're hoping Canada and the European Union will be relatively straightforward, but we're also starting those conversations, with the FDA and CV M in the US.
Thank you so much, Owen and Da da. I've really enjoyed the presentation. It's, one of our values at Webinar Vet is to be innovative, and there's no doubt that that's one of your values as well.
So well done on the fantastic work you are doing. Thank you so much for being so open and sharing with us as well. I know.
There's obviously been a lot of interest today in coming on the webinar. And I'm sure many more people will be watching it as a recording as well. So thanks again for coming on the platform and, sharing What is, a fascinating story.
And as you say, I'm sure it's only gonna develop and develop over time. So I'm looking forward to continuing to follow the story and hear, Hear the results. Perfect.
Thank you all. Yeah, for joining and thank you for the opportunity and look forward to keeping you in, in the loop and in touch. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone for listening.
See you on a webinar. Very soon. Bye bye.
