Cat food made from bacteria

FeedKind pellets. Photo: FeedKind.

It’ll be the next innovation in pet food: a food made from bacteria which contains the right balance of proteins. It’ll raise eyebrows. People will question whether strict carnivores such as felines can be sustained by bacteria. I understand the doubts. However, it will happen, I feel, and I am confident that the manufacturers, FeedKind, will ensure that it meets the specialist requirements of our domestic cat companions. I think that anything that takes us away from the current raw materials that go into cat food is a good thing such as roadkill, diseased livestock and even euthanised cats and dogs.

A US company, Calysta is behind the technology. It was co-founded by a British guy, Alan Shaw. A lot of innovators in the US are British! FeedKind is produced from methylococcus, a microbe which consumes natural gas converting it into protein which is dried and turned into pellets. So it’ll be a dry cat food; convenient but also somewhat controversial.

The feed is currently being used on fish farms. John Shaw has licensed it to makers of pet food and it may be on the shelves within 2 two years. Shaw says that it is non-GMO (genetically modified organism), grain-free, gluten-free, soy-free and vegan. Using vegan food to feed cats is controversial. There may be resistance to it from concerned cat owners who believe that cats must eat meat and that only meat contains the right ingredients.

We’ll see. You can add supplements which cover the deficiencies. Veganism is increasingly popular. It should appeal to cat guardians who are vegans or vegetarians. Bacteria based food will be available for people in due course as well in an effort, I suspect, to slow climate change as cows produce tons of methane which is a global warming gas.