The Future of Protein Production 2025: Cultivated meat at “inflection point,” says Meatly CEO
27 Nov 2025 | Meatly
Supplier of lab-grown chicken cells for pet food Meatly, is gearing up for sizable growth in the next three to five years. Its CEO, Owen Ensor, explains how a friendly regulatory environment in the UK is buoying the cultivated protein sector. He also shares how the company’s flagship ingredient has continued to propagate its product from a single vial of fertilized chicken egg cells taken four years ago.
This is Missy Green with Food Ingredients first.
I'm here with Owen Enzer, who's the CEO of Meatly.
Welcome, Owen.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
So, we are at the future of protein production in Amsterdam right now, and everyone's wondering what's the future gonna be.
Could you tell us a little bit about your company Neatly?
How did you get started, and, you know, what are you doing?
Yes, Meatly is a cultivated meat company, or lab grown meat company as it's known.
So we take a single sample of cells from one egg, one time, and from that we can create an infinite amount of meat forevermore without ever involving another animal.
In the last, we've been going about 4 years, we're the first company in Europe to ever sell cultivated meat.
We did that initially for pet food.
OK, and you're based in the UK.
We're based in the UK.
OK, so being based in the UK is a critical point, is that right?
OK, so tell us about the regulatory environment of the UK versus the EU.
Yes, so the UK has been a great market for us.
There's a lot of interest in sustainable ingredients and sustainable products.
It's also a great pet food market, which is our initial starting point.
In terms of the regulatory environment, obviously those have split since Brexit.
A lot of the regulation from Europe was inherited to the UK, but a lot of regulators are now trying to find new ways of regulating products, and food is one of the key areas they are assessing.
So for us, we worked with the UK regulators quite closely to explain what we were doing, why we're excited about it, the impact it can have.
We were able to get regulatory approval within about 2 years.
And the UK has now set up a sandbox, so the regulators are taking time to learn about cultivated meat, how they want to regulate it, so that they can set a concrete process in place.
In Europe, they are also trying, but the challenge is more bureaucratic because you need member state agreement on everything, so everything just takes a bit longer.
OK, so when is the sandbox expected to expire and they have the framework?
So it started this February.
It's a 2 year program, and as part of that they want to approve two products through the risk assessment process.
That doesn't mean they'll fully be able to sell yet, but it means they would have gone through the safety review process.
And then hopefully from that we will have a consistent process that companies can follow to get approval for food.
And you said that pet food was a starting point, so where are you looking to head next?
So for us, we love the pet food market.
It is all about loving animals, so you have a lot of people who are very welfare focused and sustainability focused, and there's a lot of demand in pet food.
So if it's an industry that we love, we'll stay in pet food for a long, long time, but we might look at licensing our technology into human food or entering into human food directly.
We're going to wait for the regulation to get clarified before we do that, so it's a less risky process.
Are you also applying for regulatory approval in other markets outside of Europe or the EU?
We've talked to a lot of regulators.
We are interested in different markets.
North America is a huge pet food market, so that's very interesting.
As as Europe, so most pet food globally is sold in Europe or North America.
So how did you actually get started with this cell?
Can you tell us about the first cell?
Yeah, so, the cells come, as I say, from a chicken egg, that's a fertilized chicken egg.
They're taken at day 10.
And from that you can create an infinite amount of meat, so the cells are doubling, as all cells do, and they just continue doubling over time.
And so yeah, we received a single vial of cells, and now we're able to create as much meat as we want.
It's a very simple process.
You put it in a large container, very similar to fermentation.
We add in the nutrients that those cells need, so these are amino acids, minerals, vitamins.
The cells metabolize those, and after about 1 week or 10 days, you have exponentially more than you put in.
So we harvest those.
It has a chicken pate consistency, and we sell it to pet food manufacturers to make delicious meals for our pets.
So what percentage of these cells would actually go into like a finished product of pet food?
Yeah, it really depends.
Pet food varies anywhere from 0% meat to 100% meat.
Most are 20 to 30%, and that's the range we'd probably go for.
OK, is there anything else you'd like to tell the world?
I think for us at Meatly and for the industry, we're at a really exciting inflection point.
So we are about to scale up.
There's one or two companies who have already scaled up, and I think in the next 3 to 5 years we'll be able to prove unit economics.
We'll be able to prove this at scale, and then start rolling this out in an industrial way beyond that.
OK, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
