Insects
are Input for Pet Food
Could insect meal and lab-grown meat be
a more sustainable, ethical way to feed our cats and dogs?
·
As the global demand for protein grows,
insects, they say, provide a more sustainable, ethical alternative to traditional
meat.
·
Skepticism
about the future of insect protein and lab-grown meat in the human food supply.
·
The pet food industry, which often uses
agricultural byproducts, has a smaller environmental footprint than the human food
sector.
·
Insects and lab-made animal protein have
the potential to be far less damaging to the environment.
·
Vegan pet food also addresses these problems
but has to be very carefully formulated — and it won’t appeal to all owners, alt-meat
entrepreneurs say.
·
Research suggests that insects are indeed
a “high-quality protein source,” with good digestibility and palatability.
·
Alt-protein companies will need to produce
these ingredients at higher quantities and lower prices.
·
You walk into the shop and you’ve got a
bag of lovely free-range chicken and a bag of insects, and they’re the same price.
[ABS
News Service/04.07.2025]
In an ideal world, Watson would have approached
the treats cautiously, with a careful sniff and tentative lick. But, being a dog
— with a voracious appetite and no discernible appreciation for narrative tension
— he devoured them immediately. He didn’t know, or care, that they were chock-full
of dried crickets and ground-up grubs.
And so what I
had envisioned as a climactic taste test was over in seconds, with what was, in
retrospect, an utterly predictable result: my dog would happily eat insects.
For years, some enterprising food entrepreneurs
have been trying to convince people to do the same. As the global demand for protein
grows, insects, they say, provide a more sustainable, ethical alternative to traditional
meat. But the idea has been a tough sell. Although insects are a dietary staple
in some cultures, for many people, they trigger a visceral disgust response.
But dogs? If they have a disgust reflex,
I haven’t seen it. Insect entrepreneurs looking for open-minded eaters could hardly
do better than good old Canis lupus familiaris.
“The dogs are not going to overthink it,”
said Anne Carlson, the chief executive of Jiminy’s, which
makes insect-based pet food and treats.
Hers is one of many pet food companies
trying to remake meat. Earlier this year, the British company
Meatly sold a limited run of dog treats made
with lab-grown chicken. BioCraft Pet Nutrition, in Austria,
is working to turn stem cells from mice into food for cats and dogs. And Bond Pet
Foods, in the United States, is using yeast to produce animal protein through the
process of fermentation.
There’s still substantial skepticism about the future of insect protein and lab-grown
meat in the human food supply — and about whether such ingredients can really wean
us off our rib-eyes and fried chicken. Some entrepreneurs see pet food as a natural
proving ground.
If a company can “crack the code for pet
food, the path to commercialization could be relatively easier,” said Rich Kelleman,
the chief executive of Bond Pet Foods. Pet food companies don’t need to replicate
the experience of biting into a perfectly crisped drumstick. “For dogs and cats,
it has to taste good,” Mr. Kelleman said. “But it doesn’t necessarily have to taste
like chicken, exactly.”
The pitch
Industrial animal agriculture takes a profound
toll on the environment, requiring lots of land and water, and producing significant
pollution, including greenhouse gases.
The
pet food industry, which often uses agricultural byproducts, has a smaller environmental
footprint than the human food sector. “But it is material, and we shouldn’t ignore
it,” said Peter Alexander, an expert on global food systems at the University of
Edinburgh.
In a 2020 study, Dr. Alexander and his colleagues found
that dry dog and cat food accounted for between 1 and 3 percent of the greenhouse
gas emissions associated with agriculture. (Wet food tends to contain more prime
meat and have a higher impact.)
“For individuals who maybe have a fairly
low-emission diet and don’t do much traveling, but they have a large dog — actually,
the dog could have a really substantial footprint,” Dr. Alexander said.
Insects
and lab-made animal protein have the potential to be far less damaging to the environment.
And because pets tend to eat the same thing every day, changing
their food “can have real impact,” Ms. Carlson said. “It’s like flipping a switch.
One day it’s unsustainable, the next, it’s sustainable.”
Reducing our reliance on industrial animal
agriculture could also prevent immense animal suffering. “In the pet industry, it’s
all about loving animals,” said Owen Ensor, the chief executive of Meatly. “And I think a lot of people are increasingly uncomfortable
with needing to harm and kill a lot of other animals to feed those animals.”
Vegan
pet food also addresses these problems but has to be very carefully formulated —
and it won’t appeal to all owners, alt-meat entrepreneurs say. “People
want to feed their pets meat,” said Mr. Ensor, who is vegan but has two cats who
are not.
The hitch
In addition to Watson, I also have two
cats. At first, figuring out how to feed them all was like trying to solve an impossible
riddle.
Watson, an intensely food-motivated dog
with a heart condition, needs a weight-control kibble and must be kept away from
the cat food, which he finds tantalizingly delicious. Juniper, my chronically underweight
cat, should ideally have free access to her food — and is also a picky eater who
reliably consumes only chicken. Then there’s Goose, a cat who will eat until he
makes himself sick and happens to have a food sensitivity to, yes, chicken.
Finding the right meal plan for this menagerie
took months of trial and error. So, as much as the sustainability and animal welfare
arguments appeal to me, I’m reluctant to start switching things up.
I’m not alone, apparently. “What we’re
learning is that people don’t really react or buy based on sustainability,” Ms.
Carlson said.
Shannon Falconer, the chief executive of
BioCraft Pet Nutrition, agreed. “The main driver of any
and all pet parent is the health of their animal,” she said. “That will supersede
anything else.” In fact, another trend in the pet food market — the rise of high-end,
human-grade products loaded with prime meat — runs directly counter to the quest
for greater sustainability.
Some companies are leaning hard into health
claims. Insects, they say, are perfect for pets like Goose, who are sensitive or
allergic to common proteins. It’s a compelling argument, and if I ever need to find
a new food for Goose, I’d consider an insect-based one.
But I’m not yet convinced by claims that
insect protein is a “superfood” — one that some companies suggest could improve
everything from gut health and coat quality to cognition and immune function.
Research
suggests that insects are indeed a “high-quality protein source,” with good digestibility
and palatability, said Kelly Swanson, a comparative nutritionist
at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But data on specific functional
benefits is limited, especially in cats and dogs. And companies will need to demonstrate
that their products include enough of the ingredient to bring about whatever benefits
they’re promising, Dr. Swanson said.
Creating nutritionally balanced products
will require a deep understanding of these new proteins. In a study published earlier this year, Belgian researchers
found that many insect-based pet foods carried inaccurate nutritional labels, and
that some of those products were deficient in one or more critical nutrients. “There
are still a lot of gaps in the knowledge and research,” said Camila Baptista da
Silva, a doctoral student at Ghent University and an author of the study.
For their part, cultivated-meat companies
note that their products are made without antibiotics or hormones, in controlled
environments free of the pathogens that lurk in barns and slaughterhouses. But lab-grown
meat isn’t risk-free; it could contain novel allergens, or
be contaminated by pathogens during the production process.
The verdict
Ultimately, whether alternative proteins
pay environmental dividends will depend on many factors, including how they are
made — some production methods can be resource intensive — how widely they are adopted
and what pet food products they displace.
As Dr. Alexander put it, “It all comes
down to, ‘What are you swapping from? What are you swapping to?’” Transitioning
from pet food containing premium beef, which has an especially high environmental
impact, to products with lab-grown meat would probably yield environmental benefits,
he said. “However, I’m doubtful that switching from animal byproducts or plant-based
ingredients to lab-grown meat will be beneficial,” he added.
And in order to have a real impact, alt-protein companies will need to produce these ingredients
at higher quantities and lower prices. Meatly, which
is currently raising money for an industrial-scale production facility, launched
with a limited supply of dog treats made with just four percent cultivated chicken.
Yora Pet Foods sells large bags of its
insect-based dog kibble for $4.50 to $5 a pound, more than one-and-a-half times
what I pay for Watson’s current food. At the moment, the grubs Yora uses cost almost
as much to produce as free-range chicken, said James Milbourne, a managing director
at the company. “If you walk into the shop and you’ve got
a bag of lovely free-range chicken and a bag of insects, and they’re the same price,”
he said, “it just makes it more difficult to get that person to take a punt on it.”
But if companies can scale up and bring
prices down, I do think customers will follow. In a 2022 study, nearly half of dog and cat owners surveyed,
including some who had no interest in eating lab-grown meat themselves, said they’d
be willing to feed cultivated meat to their pets.
I’d consider it, too, although there aren’t
currently such products available for purchase. And while I didn’t want to change
any of my pets’ primary foods, I was happy to offer up some insect-based treats.
Goose gobbled them down almost as quickly
as Watson did. But fickle Juniper wouldn’t touch the cricket treats, and she was
hot and cold on the fly variety. Some days she seemed happy to scarf them down;
other days she seemed almost offended by the offering. I could find no logic in
her ever-shifting preferences. But there’s no accounting for taste, I guess — or
often, it seems, for cats.