As managing director of British startup Yora Pet Foods, [Glenn] Rankin’s job is figuring out how to lure dogs — or at least, their grocery-shopping owners — away from traditional pet fare that contains animal meat. His company’s kibble, made from black soldier fly larvae, “tastes a bit like Stilton [cheese] on biscuits.” (Gizmo, Rankin’s five-year-old labrador, who switched from chicken-based pet food to an insect-based diet in 2020, was unable to comment.)

Bugs aren’t the only option on the menu. Shortly after Wild Earth co-founder Ryan Bethencourt introduced his plant-based dog food on US reality show Shark Tank in 2019, “I got death threats,” he says. The overwhelming theme of the feedback, including from the show’s judges, was that dogs need to eat meat. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban was the only “Shark” to invest in Wild Earth, “betting” $550,000 in exchange for a 10% stake.

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Shannon Falconer, co-founder of Vienna-based Because Animals, knows all about skeptical consumers. The startup, which employs people in Austria and the US, once created yeast-based cookies for dogs and supplements made from probiotics for cats, but neither product took off with pet owners. So Falconer decided to apply her biochemistry background to a different solution: making meat-based pet food, but growing that meat from animal cells in a bioreactor. First up, mice.

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