Fake meat to feed your dog, and save the planet

In America’s food-obsessed landscape, the quickest route to a new idea is to look for something already being done — and then make it vegan. Wild Earth Inc, a California startup, is doing that to pet food with lab-created proteins. Translated, that means fake meat for Fido.

The first launch is a dog treat made from protein produced by a fungus known as koji. It is the Japanese version of baker’s yeast. Koji grows rapidly inside tanks, along with sugar and nutrients, at the right balmy temperature. The result is a plant-based protein with a close match to eggs or animal-based meat.

“The opportunity here is to create something that is safe and sustainable,” says Wild Earth’s Ron Shigeta.


The stakes are far from small potatoes. About 68% of Americans own pets, a pawdropping 184 million dogs and cats. To feed this mass of tail-wagging companions means an annual spend of almost $30 billion. According to a first-of-its-kind study on how food consumption by dogs and cats impacts the environment, UCLA professor Gregory Okin writes that if American pets were to establish a sovereign nation, it would rank fifth in global meat consumption. Food consumption by pets is responsible for releasing up to 64 million tons of greenhouse gases every year.

Developing fake meat for pets may help put a dent in that. In doing so, the industry might pave the way toward replacing all the real meat in your fridge, too.

But for cutting-edge pet food born in the lab, hurdles await. To date, no cellular meat company has found a way to create meat from scratch in a scalable, affordable way. There’s also the “ick” factor of meat made in labs, even when we’re talking about our pets, let alone when we eventually might eat it ourselves.