Meatly, which was founded in 2022, is the first company in the world to get authorisation for cultivated pet food, which uses meat grown from animal cells.

Some other countries including Singapore have already approved cultivated meat for human consumption. 

Mr Ensor said he expected it to be “at least two years” before the UK gave this type of approval. 

However, there are signs that regulators could move quicker. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) last year said it was “considering future changes” to the approval process of cell-cultivated meat. This could “remove unnecessary burdens on business” and cut red tape, it said at the time. 

Meatly is planning to licence its technology to other companies, which may then be able to use it to create meat for human consumption. Mr Ensor said the process to create this type of meat would be “very similar”. 

However, with a fifth of all meat consumed globally used for pet food, he said his company’s explicit focus was “huge ethical and sustainability challenges” posed by this market. 

Questions have been raised over the environmental impact of producing lab-grown meat, with one study last year suggesting that its global warming impact could be between four and 25 times higher than beef.

The study, which was led by researchers at the University of California, found that the emissions from making lab-grown meat could be much higher than those from meat which is farmed.