Webinar Recap: The Future of Seafood
How Cultivated Protein Can Change How We Eat Seafood
If you weren’t able to tune in live, we have a recording of our latest webinar, The Future of Seafood, available on our Youtube channel.
Expert Panelists
Justin Kolbeck, Co-founder & CEO at Wildtype, a company producing salmon without the sea.
Pae Wu, CTO at IndieBio and Partner at SOSV. SOSV is a global venture capital firm and IndieBio is an early-stage biotech accelerator program.
John Pattison, Co-founder & CEO at Cultured Decadence, a company producing lobster without the shell.
Chris Somogyi, Co-founder at Blue Nalu, CEO of EverCase, Business Development Lead at Xerox-PARC. Blue Nalu produces tuna, mahi mahi, and other fish.
Brief Highlights
What is cultivated protein?
The Good Food Institute uses the definition: “cultivated meat is meat produced directly from cells. The process of cultivating meat uses the basic elements needed to build muscle and fat and enables the same biological process that happens inside an animal. Cultivated meat is identical to conventional meat at the cellular level.”
Why is cultivated meat an important technology?
There are lots of good reasons to pursue cultivated meat and each of our panelists brought a different perspective. Justin noted in his introduction that food security is an issue many countries are concerned about. Singapore, in particular, is investing in food technology as a way to decrease the country’s reliance on food imports.
Food is a central piece of all cultures, and people generally love eating seafood and meat. Many of us know that eating less meat probably would be good for our health and that the industrial complex that gives us cheap and plentiful animal protein has a high environmental footprint. The issue, as Justin noted, is, “these foods are really good, they’re integrated and ingrained in our culture. We have memories of barbecues as kids and salmon bakes and clam bakes and convincing people to eat lentils and pulses is really hard. In fact, it just won’t work. So what if we could just make something that was a no-compromise alternative?”
How big are the meat and seafood markets?
The food industry is massive, almost $12 trillion in 2019, just on the consumer side (consumer meaning what people eat, not including the food our food eats). From our analysis, globally the meat industry is worth $838B, dairy is $827B, poultry is $320B, and seafood is $150B.
Is cultivated protein too expensive?
This question looms large over any conversation about cellular agriculture. An article in The Counter made a detailed argument that the fundamentals are simply too expensive and they won’t ever decrease enough for cultivated protein to be cost-competitive with animal protein.
There are several counterarguments to the claims made in that article. Justin began by noting that this industry is still in its infancy, and arguing that “it will not be able to ever bring costs down sufficiently” is a bit like arguing after Tesla produced the Roadster that the car was too expensive. The job isn’t done yet and innovation will continue to bring costs down. There are promising startups working tirelessly to improve almost every part of this technology and billions of dollars are being deployed to support those companies and fund more R&D.
Chris added that manufacturing processes, yield, storage, and access to capital are all key areas where costs will continue to decrease as the industry matures. The manufacturing plants will no doubt be expensive and it is critical that new types of hardware be invented to serve this industry. Financing the R&D and production of these new tools will cost money and that money has to come from somewhere. (Author’s note: some of it may come from Prime Movers Lab! We would love to hear about your business in the future of food or cultivated protein space! Email your deck to Brad at primemoverslab dot com)
Why is cultivated seafood a better source than the oceans or fish farms?
Justin made the case for cultivated seafood as a premium product because it is free of mercury, antibiotics, microplastics and doesn’t impact coastal ecosystems or wild catch.
However, cultivated isn’t the only way to address these challenges. Plant-based alternatives are already on the market and as Pae pointed out, vertical aquaculture is another technology that will enable seafood consumption while improving on existing production methods. Vertical Oceans, an SOSV portfolio company, uses vertical aquaculture to grow shrimp, and Upward Farms, a Prime Movers Lab portfolio company, uses a hydroponic system to grow striped bass and greens.
One surprising benefit of cultivated seafood is that you can “engineer out” allergens. Chris noted that many people are allergic to halibut but you can actually design the protein you grow to avoid the specific proteins that cause allergies. Don’t expect this to come to a market near you any time soon, but one day, you may be able to choose the “hypo-allergenic halibut.” Chris pointed out that while this is possible, it’s probably not the first or second priority for most companies as there is so much profit to be had simply executing on their core business plans.
How does it taste?
There are already plant-based alternatives that taste great and are viable alternatives to animal meat. Fried products are an especially convenient starting point since most fried foods taste good. If you didn’t know KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken wasn’t made of “real” chicken, it might fool you as I’ve been told it tastes delicious! However, as John pointed out, in the seafood category, and especially for products you cook at home, there just aren’t any great alternatives right now. In addition to taste, texture and mouthfeel are critical components of the overall sensory experience that companies will need to solve.
How transferable is the technology that cultivated protein companies use?
There are elements that every cultivated protein company will have in common and can learn from each other. Marketing and regulatory approaches will be key areas where companies build off learnings from each other.
Other components of these technologies are more different than you may think. John explained that cells from different animals behave differently and have different intracellular processes. This will create challenges unique to each company in the space.
Most importantly, when can I eat this?!
Pae made the point that despite any amount of scientific development before anyone in the US is able to start eating cultivated protein, the regulatory bodies that oversee this area need to weigh in and pave the way for companies to bring products to market.
Singapore is a leader here and as noted earlier, the country’s national priority to produce 30% of its nutritional needs locally is an example of how the public and private sectors can support each other. The government wrote clear rules and allowed experimentation, and the private sector responded by serving the first publicly available cultivated product: chicken nuggets.
Will we still eat animals in 100 years?
Our panelists were in unanimous agreement that yes, we will still be consuming animal protein in 100 years. While I agree with their predictions, I also hope and believe that cultivated protein will be one of the technologies that helps humanity feed a growing population while minimizing the environmental, ethical, and health impacts that our current agricultural system creates.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agriculture.
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