May 2nd 2025
The Pack vegan dog food company have sold to Prefera Pet Food which delights us at Just Be Kind as we are all about celebrating plant-based dog food companies and their growth as it means more and more highly sustainable nutritious products for our dogs AND cats!
The acquisition of The Pack comes just weeks after they co-launched the UK’s first cultivated meat product for dogs called Chick Bites (read more here). The advances are happening SO fast in the sustainable pet food space with groundbreaking biotic protein dog food Microbell launching in February 2025, and now the possibility of a hugely sustainable cultured meat protein cat food in the same year - hurrah!!!
Why is this acquisition so exciting for our cats?
Prefera partnered this year with US startup BioCraft Pet Nutrition to co-manufacture cell-cultured mouse ingredient on a commercial scale.
BioCraft co-founder and CEO Shannon Falconer says “We anticipate being able to offer meaningful volumes of our ingredient to pet food manufacturers in late 2025.” BioCraft Pet Nutrition received registration from Austrian authorities to sell its cultivated meat ingredient in pet food applications across the EU this year.
This exciting development means that we may have this novel sustainable protein source cat food available by the end of the year! (and we would definitely stock this one for your cats even though it isn't vegan as it is SO needed in the sustainable cat food nutrition space as can you imagine how many animals this cultivated mouse meat cat food could save?!) At Just Be Kind, we are all about not only the health of our planet and saving as many animals as possible with the food that we feed our pets; but we also care deeply about improving the health of our dogs and cats.
Will Mouse Mousse Be Safe And Healthy For Our Cats?
According to this article about cultured mouse protein safety, studies confirmed that the company’s ingredient is produced using stable, non-genetically modified animal cells, and is free from bacterial pathogens, viruses, mycotoxins, moulds and yeasts. The cultivated mouse meat doesn’t contain biogenic amines or heavy metals.
“This comprehensive safety analysis goes well beyond regulatory compliance and provides a meticulous breakdown of our feed safety protocols, including stringent supplier verification processes, traceability documentation, risk assessments for every critical control point,” says Shannon Falconer.
“We’ve implemented rigorous quality control measures and transparency across our supply chain, and the result is the highest industry standards for safety and integrity in alternative protein production,” she adds.
The cat food is designed to closely replicate the nutritional profile of a cat’s natural diet as it is what they would normally eat as prey. It offers key benefits including a balanced Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acid ratio and a hypoallergenic protein source. BioCraft says the ingredient also meets or exceeds conventional meat in levels of essential nutrients like taurine, lysine, methionine, and tryptophan – critical for feline health.
Traditional cat foods high in fish protein should NOT be fed to our cats as shown in this article with 5 top reasons why cats should NOT eat fish!
“Sustainability is a motherlode of innovation.” – Harvard Business Review
"Delivering value with a new product and capturing value in return as with a profit without regard to environmental and sustainable impact is not innovation, it’s exploitation. Innovation is usually driven by necessity, with our backs up against the wall. It also often emerges from the bottom up, because those on the “frontlines” working directly with customers or clients have the best and most immediate insights into their needs and pain points.”
READ WHY WE CELEBRATE PLANT-BASED CATS
