Omni launches functional dog food range
A pet health brand debuts complete dog foods with built-in joint, skin, and calming support, while two cultivated meat startups announce a breakthrough in protein yield and productivity.
Two distinct developments highlight innovation in food formulation and production. A veterinary-founded brand is integrating targeted health supplements into everyday dog food, and a collaboration in cellular agriculture has achieved a significant leap in cultivated meat yields.
Functional Dog Foods
Omni, a London-based pet health brand founded by veterinarian Dr Guy Sandelowsky, has launched three complete dry dog foods. The recipes, named Omni Joints, Omni Skin, and Omni Calm, are designed for dogs over twelve months old and incorporate functional ingredients directly into meals, using sweet lupin bean as a protein base. This move extends the brand's existing supplement categories into its main food line, following a £1.1 million funding round in 2022 and a recent £75,000 investment from television investors Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden.
The company states the foods are formulated holistically rather than by simply adding supplements to a standard recipe. Omni Joints is a calorie-controlled formula intended to help maintain body weight, while Omni Skin excludes soya and grain. Omni Calm is designed for consistent, year-round feeding to support calm behavior. Dr Sandelowsky explained that the foods provide a complete nutritional foundation, while the brand's separate supplements offer different ingredient combinations for additional targeted support. The foods are sold in 2kg and 10kg bags directly through the company's website.
Cultivated Meat Productivity
Israeli startup Ever After Foods and Scotland's Roslin Technologies have collaborated to produce structured cultivated meat tissue with dramatically higher protein concentration and productivity. The partnership combined Ever After Foods' edible scaffold and bioreactor system with Roslin Technologies' advanced porcine stem cell platform. Eyal Rosenthal, CEO of Ever After Foods, stated that manufacturing productivity is a major factor in economic viability, and this breakthrough has significant implications for production costs by requiring less equipment and infrastructure per kilogram of product.
The process involved expanding cells in suspension before seeding them directly onto an edible scaffold within a specialized bioreactor. The companies report achieving a cell density of 150 million cells per milliliter in nine days, which they describe as a 62-fold increase. The volumetric productivity outputs were substantially higher compared to a standard stirred-tank suspension benchmark, as detailed in the table below.
| Metric | Productivity Achieved | Benchmark (Stirred-Tank) | Increase Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wet Biomass | 326g per liter | Not specified | 11x higher |
| Dry Biomass | 57g per liter | Not specified | 19x higher |
| Cultivated Protein | 40g per liter | Not specified | 19x higher |
Roslin Technologies' pluripotent stem cells, which can replicate indefinitely and differentiate into any tissue, were grown in serum-free media. The final structured tissue was produced directly on Ever After Foods' edible scaffold, a step that reduces the need for separate harvesting and processing. The companies emphasize that moving beyond just cell density to efficiently produce edible protein and structured tissue is critical for commercial scale.
