Sustainable and innovative ingredients in pet nutrition: microalgae and cultivated meat

The ultimate goal of pet owners, veterinarians, and pet food manufacturers should be the same: long healthy lives for dogs and cats, achieved through optimized nutrition, using ingredients that are not only healthy but also sustainable and not responsible for public health and animal welfare issues. In this framework, two main categories of ingredients are gaining relevance: functional foods and alternative proteins. Functional foods are able to provide health benefits beyond the provision of essential nutrients due to their content of nutraceutical bioactive compounds. However, very limited evidence is available from studies in dogs and cats. In recent years, many studies have instead investigated the possibilities of using plant-based ingredients and insects as alternative protein sources to reduce the environmental impact of pet food. To achieve the same aim, the nascent field of cellular agriculture is developing another possible alternative protein option whose application as an ingredient for pet nutrition has not yet been investigated: cultivated meat. While the rationale behind cultivated meat development is to produce actual animal protein without the ecological and One Health-related burdens of conventional meat production, the application of this innovative alternative protein in pet food should also be directed at improving pet nutrition and health. Similarly, functional foods should also aim to combine nutraceutical benefits with sustainability advantages. A great example are microalgae, a class of functional foods that only recently has started to be fed to pets. The two aims of this project were, therefore, (1) to evaluate the nutraceutical supplementation of one of the most promising microalgae – Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) – in pet nutrition, and (2) to evaluate the use of cultivated meat as an ingredient for pet food. The results of the studies conducted within this project showed that: (1) a daily administration of A. platensis in amounts ranging from 0.04 to 0.19 g/kg/day in dogs and from 0.08 to 0.25 g/kg/day in cats is well-tolerated and palatable; (2) Spirulina supplementation lower endogenous serum bilirubin and enhances the hypotriglyceridemic effect of weight loss in obese dogs, while weight loss alone without Spirulina supplementation is sufficient to achieve several metabolic benefits, including the restoration of optimal plasma antioxidant capacity; (3) owners are willing to adopt dietary Spirulina as nutraceutical supplementation for their dogs; (4) cultivated meat is expected to be safe to consume by pets if the production process is carefully designed and monitored, and if hazards identification and risk assessment and control are properly conducted; (5) cultivated meat use in pet food could contribute significantly to the solutions to a wide range of issues that include supply chain shortages, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and One Health problems, including antibiotic resistance, food safety and zoonotic diseases – however, the cost and scale challenges to make the price of cultivated meat-based pet food need to be overcome and evidence about the nutritional properties of cultivated meat and the health outcomes of its consumption need to be collected; (6) using microalgae and cultivated meat to feed dogs and cats have the potential to make pets’ diet more sustainable, healthy and ethical.