Cultured Cat Food? Now, that's culture!

The Cat Food Recipes Blog discussed an interesting application for in vitro cultured meat: food for your companion animal.  It has often been suggest that the taste and consistency of cultured meat will be the most important factor in consumer acceptance of cultured meat.  A recent Instute for Engineering Technology articles writes that without a way to get cultured meat cells to grow together "all you have is a meat-flavoured jelly with all the resistance of an oyster."  That doesn't sound very tasty.

However, if you have ever tasted pet food, such a lack of texture of the current cultured meat might actually be a plus for pet food. 

This also touches on the debate of whether it is ethical to feed animal products to your pet.   I had a conversation about this with one of my ardent vegan friends.  She feeds animal-based food to her cat and says that she doesn't want to force her eating habits on others.   Others (like me) don't think there is anything wrong with bringing up a companion animal (or a young child for that matter) on a healthy, vegetarian diet. (Check out veggiepets!)   Cultured meat does raise some ethical issues of its own for some vegetarians.  But for many others, this is yet another way that cultured meat may help modern persons be more ethical.