US food tech startup Friends & Family Pet Food Company has received regulatory approval to sell its cultivated meat for dogs and cats in Singapore, a first for Asia. Its inaugural treats will contain 65-70% cultured cells.
Friends & Family Pet Food Company has secured approval from Singapore’s Animal & Veterinary Services (AVS) to sell cultivated meat for dogs and cats.
The Californian startup is the first to be cleared to sell cultivated pet food in Asia. It produces human-grade cultivated meat from the cells of Kampung chickens, a breed native to Malaysia and Indonesia, and will initially sell it as part of eight SKUs, with more to follow.
“We’ve formulated treats, supplements and food products, which I’ll launch individually when we are ready for production,” co-founder and CEO Joshua Errett tells Green Queen. “We’ll start production in late summer/early fall. So we’re aiming to have products on our site and in select stores shortly after that.”
Back in 2016, he co-founded cultivated pet food firm BioCraft Pet Nutrition with CEO Shannon Falconer, before establishing vegan dog treats brand Noochies, which was acquired by Cult Food Science, where he served as a VP until December 2023.
Errett argues that Friends & Family, which he co-founded with CSO Sarah Dodd and Jonny Cruz in 2024, is a nutrition company. “Our goal is to improve the underlying protein source in pet foods with cultivated meat,” he says. “Cultivated meat is the only ingredient I’ve come across in my decade in pet food that has this potential.”
The announcement comes just days after two regulatory wins for cultivated meat startups in Friends & Family’s home country: Mission Barns secured the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) green light for its cultured pork fat, while Believer Meats received a ‘no questions’ letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its cultivated chicken.
Friends & Family targets pet nutrition with cultivated meat
Errett notes how dogs, cats and humans all source their food from the same supply chain. “There are no farms that I’m aware of that only produce meat for dogs. So the cow your steak is from may well be the same cow your dog’s beef kibble is from. That’s the current pet food production model, a shared supply with humans,” he says.
“We’ve copied that model to an extent. We co-develop our ingredients with partners, working together to fully optimise cultivated meat and fish for cats and dogs. This allows us to focus solely on the nutrition, manufacturing and sale of high-performance, premium pet food products.”
Friends & Family works with 10 undisclosed partners, including contract manufacturers and academic institutions, and employs a proprietary manufacturing process.
“On the pet food side, we use freeze-dried, air-dried, frozen-fresh and broth formats for our end products, which are different production methods,” Errett says. “What I can say definitively is we avoid too much processing – we like to minimally process all our end products to keep the nutrients and flavours of the cultivated ingredients plentiful and bioavailable to the cat and dog.”
The company will enter the market with freeze-dried treats. “Cultivated meat is the first ingredient by volume. It’ll come in at approximately 65-70% of the total volume,” he reveals. “We use a proprietary blend of nutritional yeast and prebiotic fibres to support immunity, digestion and longevity. And those are the ingredients.”
The products contain prebiotics and oligosaccharides thanks to their ability to “make it through the digestive tract” to the microbiome. “We have 20+ peer-reviewed studies to show these specialised prebiotic fibres rehabilitate and regulate the microbiome, support stool quality, and improve nutrient absorption, which is crucial for cats and dogs. The majority of the immune function of a companion animal is in the gastrointestinal tract,” he says.
A second SKU of treats will focus on bioavailable trace minerals, including zinc and vitamins B, K and A to support longer lifespans.
Products to be sold indefinitely, not as a limited-edition trial
Friends & Family’s inclusion rate is on the higher side, both for pet food and cell-cultured meat in general. The treats launched this year by London-based Meatly, the first company to receive approval for cultivated pet food, contained only 4% of cultured meat.
Meanwhile, after registering its product with Austrian regulators (paving the way for market entry in the EU), BioCraft Pet Nutrition has been working on a product with 99% cultivated mouse meat – but it is yet to commercialise this innovation.
The high share of cultivated meat content in Friends & Family’s treats begs the question: how expensive is it? “We’ll be priced competitively in the premium Southeast Asian market. I’m pleased where we are today with our price and margin, but we’ll aim to get better as we gain economies of scale,” says Errett.
“I know there’s a lot of focus on price parity. If we were competing to get into the supply chain of a multinational pet corporation, I think we would need price parity – the pet industry loves very cheap proteins,” he adds.
“We are creating nutrition to benefit the animal, and the buyer for that is the end consumer: pet parents. Consumers have more criteria than simply price. And, believe it or not, price is not always the driver. You wouldn’t see Farmer’s Dog break $1B in revenue if all the consumer cared about was price.
“Value is the driver. What does this food do for my cat? What are the nutritional benefits? Why is it better long-term for the health and longevity of my dog? The benefit of the nutrition is measured against the price point, and there is the value. In terms of value, we believe we have made a superior freeze-dried treat to anything currently on the market.”
Friends & Family’s pet food will be manufactured locally in Singapore, and it has an inventory of tonnes of cultivated meat. This will enable it to commercialise at scale in what is a relatively smaller market for pet food.
“This is not a market test or a limited-time trial. We are going to sell our products as a going concern,” says Errett. “Through our partners, we have more cultivated meat and fish ingredients than we can use right now.”
‘We decided to step back’ from US regulatory efforts
The approval from the AVS came in June, 10 months after Friends & Family filed its application. “I have a full appreciation for the Singapore regulatory system – it is open to innovation, but still thorough,” says Errett.
The authorisation process for pet foods has different standards from that of novel food for humans, which is regulated by the Singapore Food Agency. “Obviously, pet food is similar to human food when it comes to general safety, but there are differences in nutrition, production, labelling, licensing required, and more,” he says. “For instance, pet foods generally consider crude fibre, while if you look at a human food label, you’d see a measure of dietary fibre.”
He adds: “Overall, though, it wasn’t as painful as in other jurisdictions we’ve applied to, and I appreciated the people we worked with at the AVS in Singapore.”
Speaking of which, while Friends & Family has been engaging with the US FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) for over a year, after striking partnerships with Umami Bioworks and Novel Farms, the re-election of Donald Trump and the chaotic restructuring of federal bodies and policy rollbacks have stalled progress.
“We decided to step back to see what happens with a few priorities put forth by the new administration there,” says Errett. “Excitingly, the CVM just launched a new ingredient review process called the Animal Food Ingredient Consultation (AFIC), which I’m very intrigued by.”
For all the political uproar about cultivated meat in the US – including seven state-level bans and numerous others under consideration – it is the country with the most regulatory approvals for these proteins. Eat Just‘s Good Meat, Upside Foods (both for chicken), Mission Barns (for pork fat), Wildtype (for salmon) are all allowed to sell cultivated meat there, and Believer Meats will join that list once the USDA approves its facility and labels.
“We recently signed a deal with a major American pet company for cultivated products, so we’re definitely going to land here at some point,” says Errett. “Now, our focus is Asia.”
And just as well. Singapore was the first to approve cultivated meat back in 2020, with Good Meat rolling out its chicken in restaurants and later in retail. Vow is cleared to sell its cultured quail in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Industry experts are also hopeful of approvals in Thailand and South Korea this year.
Friends & Family has approval in other countries too
Globally, regulators in the EU and Switzerland are evaluating regulatory dossiers for cultivated meat as well, while the UK has created a designated regulatory sandbox to help human food companies follow in Meatly’s footsteps.
“We are working with other regulatory systems and do indeed have approval in other countries,” reveals Errett. “[However] we are very focused on Singapore right now – we need to get on the market before expanding anywhere.”
He adds: “As much as we believe we are creating a foundational shift in pet food and nudging the industry into the future, we still need to use the established launch playbook, and do this one step at a time.”
What’s in store for Friends & Family over the coming months? “We have cultivated fish products in the pipeline, so we’ll see how that goes in the next year or so,” he notes. “I’m cat-obsessed, and cultivated fish for cats has been a target of mine since forever.”
The startup has raised “a small amount of venture capital”, with the rest of the funding coming from Errett’s last exit. “It was super challenging to raise money when you can’t even sell your products,” he says.
“Now that we have market access, we are opening up a new round. We’re looking at scaling up production and nailing our product-market fit,” he reveals. “This is a brand new category, and we are the first to market in Asia, and first anywhere with cultivated products for cats, so that will take some effort and resources.”
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