Bobby-Calf Protein Snack Wins Fieldays Award – and Sparks Fresh Calls for Cultivated Meat

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Bobby-calf protein snack, Mīti, has walked away with a prized Fieldays 2025 Innovation Award, but the win has ignited backlash over New Zealand’s long-running bobby-calf dilemma and sharpened consumer curiosity about cultivated, bio-manufactured meat alternatives. Oamaru start-up Alps2Ocean Foods Tapui Ltd took the Early-Stage and People’s Choice trophies for a “world-first, shelf-stable, functional protein snack” made from surplus dairy calves – animals routinely removed from their mothers and slaughtered within days of birth.

Source: Public domain. Mīti Principals, Dr Lily Liu and Daniel Carson, with their Field Days Early Stage Innovation Award

Head judge Shane Dooley hailed Mīti as “game-changing”, claiming it “transforms bobby-calf waste into a high-value, low-carbon protein product” and helps “reshape the wellbeing narrative around calf management”. Animal-welfare advocates bristled at the framing. Claire Insley, Vegan Society of Aotearoa (New Zealand) spokesperson, told PFN: “Slaughtering newborn calves and rebranding them as ‘surplus’ or ‘waste’ doesn’t magically erase the ethical problem. These are babies removed from their mothers for milk we drink. A snack food doesn’t fix that.”

New Zealand kills roughly 1.8–2 million bobby calves every year, according to industry and academic reports – a figure that sits uncomfortably alongside this week’s celebration of “circular” innovation. Dairy executives argue that turning calves into beef, blood serum or pet-food ingredients “adds value” and reduces waste. Critics counter that the practice persists mainly because the dairy system creates more calves than farmers can rear economically.

Source: PFN Ai Archives - 'Dairy Surplus ' Bobby Calves ready for slaughter.

While Fieldays applauded a novel use for calf flesh, regulators across the Tasman have just green-lit cultivated quail from Sydney start-up Vow, marking Australasia’s first approval for cell-grown meat. That milestone, says Flip Grater, Founder of Christchurch based, Grater Goods, a Kiwi plant-based products trailblazer say this should give meat-lovers pause. “If we can enjoy animal proteins without killing animals – or separating mothers and calves – why cling to 19th-century supply chains? This just highlights that the production of traditional dairy and meat at scale is abhorrent and wildly inefficient. And makes no commercial or ethical sense when alternatives are readily available.”

Dairy giants such as Fonterra have already moved to restrict on-farm calf euthanasia, yet around half of all male calves still head to slaughter within a week of birth. Mīti’s founders argue that turning those calves into a premium shelf-stable snack cuts waste and emissions. Animal-welfare groups counter that truly “low-carbon, ethical protein” will come from plants, precision fermentation and cultivated meat – not from killing ever-younger calves more efficiently.

Mīti will hit shelves later this year, targeting high-protein snackers. Vegan and animal-rights groups are gearing up for a social-media campaign spotlighting milk’s hidden cost. Cultivated-meat players – from Australia's Vow to local precision-fermentation outfit Daisy Lab and cell culture startup, Opo Bio – smell an opportunity to position their products as kinder, cleaner successors to bobby-calf beef.

As consumers weigh a snack made from “surplus” baby calves against meat grown without slaughter, New Zealand’s proud dairy narrative faces a fresh, very public stress-test”

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