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Cell cultures as pet food:Try it on the dog|Lab-grown meat may solve some pet owners’ dilemmas

实验室培育的肉类也许能解决一些宠物主人的尴尬处境

编辑：vinbin 日期：Tues, Fed 16, 2021

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PET OWNERS, at least in the West, are more likely than other people to be vegetarians or vegans. That puts many of them in a quandary when it comes to feeding fully paid-up carnivores such as cats and dogs. But technology may soon resolve this dilemma. The idea of growing meat for human consumption from scratch, in the form of cell cultures, is now becoming popular. Some see in this approach a way to produce guilt-free pet food, too. Among these visionaries are Shannon Falconer and Joshua Errett, the founders of Because Animals, a firm based in Philadelphia. They have taken the idea to what might be seen as its logical conclusion, for the starting point for their cultured cat food is that favourite feline prey, a mouse.

养宠物的人，至少在西方，比其他人更可能是素食主义者。当涉及到喂食猫和狗等精心照料的食肉动物时，他们中的许多人陷入了两难境地。但技术可能很快就会解决这一困境。以细胞培养的方式，从零开始培植供人类食用的肉类，这个想法现在正变得越来越流行。有些人认为这种方法也可以生产出没有罪恶感的宠物食品。这些梦想家包括Shannon Falconer和Joshua Errett在内，他们是费城一家名为Because Animals的公司的创始人。他们已经把这个想法带到了被认为符合其逻辑结论的地方，因为他们培育猫粮的出发点是猫最喜欢的猎物——老鼠。

Mice are, indeed, what brought cats and people together in the first place—the two species having a shared predatory interest in the rodent populations that inhabited the grain stores accumulated by early farmers. To square this primordial feline appetite with the modern world’s more refined sensibilities, researchers at Because Animals isolated murine stem cells, which will multiply explosively if treated well, from a biopsy of the skin of an appropriate rodent, and have so multiplied them. The result, the firm hopes, will be on the market by the end of the year.

的确，老鼠是最初把猫和人类带到一起的原因——这两个物种对这些早期农民积累的粮仓里的啮齿类动物种群有着共同的捕猎兴趣。为了使猫原始的胃口与现代社会更精细的敏感性（指素食主义者即对吃荤的反抗，对吃素的崇尚）相适应，研究人员从啮齿动物的皮肤活检中分离出老鼠干细胞，并使其大量繁殖。如果处理得当，老鼠干细胞会大量繁殖。该公司希望，其成果将在今年年底投放市场。

Lest any sensitive pet-owner worry that even a single mouse was exploited in an unjustified way to achieve this, the firm is at pains to clarify that the cell donor has retired to live with one of its scientists in a “plush mouse house”. That is definitely a wise and diplomatic move. One of Because Animals’ competitors, Wild Earth, of Berkeley, California, which had had similar thoughts about making cat food from cultured mouse cells, chose to withdraw after finding itself on the receiving end of hostile responses based on the misapprehension that the production process would involve killing laboratory rodents.

为了避免任何敏感的宠物主人担心甚至一只老鼠被不正当地利用来达到这个目的，该公司耗尽心力地澄清，献出细胞的老鼠已经退役，被研究它的一位科学家照料，住在一个“毛绒老鼠屋里”。这绝对是一个明智的举动。"Because Animals"的竞争对手之一,伯克利,加州的“野生地球”,也有通过培植老鼠细胞制作猫粮的类似想法,但是受到人们敌意的误解，即认为生产过程将涉及杀死实验室这些啮齿动物，然后选择退出了。

Wild Earth has now retreated to safer ground. It has teamed up with other developers of cultured meat to investigate the possibilities of fish and chicken cells instead. It plans, also by the end of the year, to launch products made by mixing these with its existing vegan pet food formulae.

野生地球现在已经撤退到更安全的地方。该公司与其他人造肉制品研发商合作，研究用鱼和鸡的细胞替代方案。该公司也计划在今年年底之前，将这些产品与现有的纯素食宠物食品配方混合生产出来。

A third firm, Bond Pet Foods of Boulder, Colorado, is developing something one step yet further removed from conventional pet food. It, too, works with chickens. But instead of growing their cells directly, it is inserting genes for nutritionally important chicken proteins into cells of brewer’s yeast. These reproduce faster than chicken cells do, and nurturing them is a well-understood art. Bond hopes to have dog food containing proteins extracted from these cells on the market by 2023.

第三家公司，科罗拉多州博尔德的邦德宠物食品公司，正在开发一种比传统宠物食品更进一步的食物。它也用鸡肉来研究。但它并不是直接培养它们的细胞，而是将具有重要营养价值的鸡肉蛋白质基因放入布鲁尔氏酵母细胞。这些细胞的繁殖速度比鸡细胞要快，培育它们是一门更为人所理解的艺术。邦德希望到2023年能让含有从这些细胞中提取蛋白质的狗粮上市。

Ciao chow

你好，食物！

As a consequence of their target market—devoted “pet parents”, as industry parlance refers to them—all three firms hope to sell at premium prices. Moreover, manufacturers of laboratory meat, whether intended for people or for pets, can claim green credentials on top of conscience-free carnivory. Dr Falconer says that a kilogram of cultured meat generates just 1.7kg of carbon-dioxide emissions, compared with 27kg attributable to the same quantity of beef. Vats of cells also require far less land and water than farmed animals.

由于他们的目标市场是“宠物父母”(行业用语，即宠物主人)，这三家公司都希望以高价出售。此外，实验室用肉(无论是供人食用的还是供宠物食用的)的制造商可以在不受良心谴责的肉食上宣称自己是绿色环保的。Falconer博士说，一公斤的人造肉制品只产生1.7公斤的二氧化碳排放，而同样数量的牛肉可产生27公斤的二氧化碳排放。与饲养动物相比，细胞桶需要的土地和水也少得多。

Turning cultured cells into pet food is a clever idea for reasons besides pet-owners’ sensibilities towards the animal origin of their charges’ food. Unlike human customers, pets are not in a position to be fussy about what the food they eat actually looks like. And they are, in any case, used to consuming dried kibble and nondescript wet foods. It is easier to turn cultured cells into these than into something resembling the juicy joints and steaks that many people like to tuck into. As long as the concoctions taste good to a pet, they will be wolfed down. Indeed, both Mr Errett and Rich Kelleman, the founder of Bond Pet Foods, claim to have tested their firms’ prototypes on their own pets. And Ryan Bethencourt, one of the founders of Wild Earth, has gone further. He has promised to taste his own wares before trying them on animals. ■

将培养的细胞转化为宠物食品是一个聪明的想法，除了宠物主人对他们所购买的食物的动物来源敏感之外，还有其它原因。与人类顾客不同的是，宠物并不会对它们所吃食物的形态大惊小怪、担心。而且，无论如何，他们习惯了吃干粮和难以形容的湿粮。将培养出来的细胞转化成这些食物要比把它们转化成人们喜欢吃的多汁的牛腿肉和牛排容易得多。只要这些混合物对宠物来说味道不错，它们就会被吃掉。事实上，Errett先生和Bond宠物食品公司的创始人Rich Kelleman都声称已经在他们自己的宠物身上测试了他们公司的研发的食品。而《野生地球》的创始人之一瑞恩·贝肯特则更进一步。他答应先尝一尝自己制造的人造肉制品，然后再给动物尝尝。■

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