Ivy Farm says its cultivated Wagyu is cleared for UK pet food

UK pet food brands may soon have a second cultivated meat to consider, after Ivy Farm Technologies said its cultivated Wagyu beef is cleared for the UK pet food market. Food Manufacture reported the company's account of a close, collaborative process with regulators, including Defra and APHA.

Ivy Farm says it will supply pet food brands and manufacturers, with a first commercial-scale run due in early 2027. It also says a European pet food application is in. We found no regulator notice of the approval, so for now it rests on Ivy Farm's statement as reported by Food Manufacture.

Cultivated Wagyu gives UK brands a premium option

Harsh Amin, chief executive of Ivy Farm, sees pet food as a use for the plant. "This approval opens up pet food as a route to market for our cultivated wagyu. It puts our Oxford facility to work and gives pet owners and the brands they buy from a premium, nutritious and more sustainable option," Amin said.

Amin said Ivy Farm wants pet food partners in the UK and Europe. It is scaling up.

Ivy Farm says its cultivated Wagyu is real beef, grown from cells of a single, individually registered F1 Wagyu cow without slaughter. It cites a small blind A/B test run by pet food manufacturer Fold Hill. In it, dogs accepted a cultivated Wagyu treat as readily as a conventional beef treat.

Ivy Farm also says human consumption approvals are under way in the UK, Europe and the US. Separately, the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland, which regulate human food, published four cell-cultivated guidance documents on July 10th, 2026. The sandbox programme behind them runs to February 2027.

Meatly's chicken is no longer the only UK choice

Meatly got there first. Meatly's own announcement in July 2024 named the Food Standards Agency, Defra and APHA. It called its cultivated chicken the first in the world to get authorisation for cultivated pet food.

Meatly raised a £10.4M Series A in May 2026 for a 20,000-litre facility in London, with product releases expected in 2027.

Ivy Farm was incorporated on October 9th, 2019, according to its Companies House record, which shows the company as active with accounts filed to December 31st, 2025.

Elsewhere in cultivated pet food, BioCraft Pet Nutrition published a safety dossier on its mouse embryonic stem cell line in July as a bioRxiv preprint, after registering with Austrian authorities.

Friends & Family Pet Food launched 12 cultivated treats and toppers in Singapore retail after local clearance, at S$14 to S$32 a unit.

Brands can now choose between chicken and Wagyu

David Pytches, head of sales at Ivy Farm, said the company is already in conversations with pet food brands and manufacturers about the ingredient, and he pitched provenance as the selling point. "Pet owners want to know exactly what goes into their pet's bowl, and the best brands are looking for ingredients that deliver on nutrition, taste and provenance. Our cultivated wagyu offers all three, and we're talking to pet food brands and manufacturers about how it can help them stand out," Pytches said.

For a UK brand weighing cultivated protein, that puts Meatly's chicken and Ivy Farm's Wagyu side by side, one a staple protein and the other a named premium breed.

Our view: the first products are likelier to be treats, since the only product test Ivy Farm describes used a treat.

Next up for Ivy Farm are the early 2027 run and the European filing.

Source: Food Manufacture