Lab-Cultured Seafood is Coming
We’ve heard about cell-cultured beef burgers and lab-grown chicken, but have you heard about cell-based seafood? This emerging industry has the potential of diverting human appetites from wild-caught fish to lab-grown seafood and could be one way to ease the pressure off global fisheries.
Currently, 85% of our world’s fisheries are either overfished or exploited. We have reached the highest demand for seafood in human history. Ultimately, continuing at this current consumption rate, all the fisheries will collapse by 2048.
The global fishing rate is almost 3 times larger than what our oceans can sustain. So running out of seafood is a very possible scenario — and it can happen soon.
There are even more issues associated with current fishing tactics: pollution. As we fish, we’re also polluting the oceans with dangerous chemicals and toxins that are contaminating our seafood. Our fish supply — a precious source of protein — is becoming more and more of a threat to our health due to pollution, climate change, among other human-caused issues.
Together with plastic and chemical pollution, overfishing is leading to a dramatic decline in marine biodiversity that the world has witnessed over the past few decades. Since 1950, humans have already taken 6 billion tons of fish and invertebrates from the earth’s oceans. Six billion tons. Just try and imagine how many living creatures that is.
And that’s not all. The way we catch fish is also harming other forms of marine life. The nets used to capture seafood — trawlnets, and gillnets — don’t just pick up fish. Often, they bring along other forms of life and damage ecosystems like coral reefs in the process.
So humans are polluting the earth, contributing to climate change, while overfishing our oceans. Eventually, we’ll leave almost 10 billion people hungry and little to no fish supply.
The problem continues. If and when the demand for fish rises and the fish supply plummets, the cost to purchase seafood will go up. We’re already depleting fish, at a rate way faster than the fish are being produced — so, people might not even be able to afford fish.
There’s Already a Solution: Cell-cultured Seafood
The most advanced cellular agriculture company producing seafood without the use of fish is Finless Foods. They are working on culturing fish cells to produce sustainable seafood without containing heavy metals and other contaminants. Finless Foods makes the list as the first cellular agriculture startup producing cultured fish meat. Right now, they making lab-grown Bluefin tuna.
Although Finless Foods was the first call cultured dish startup, they’re not the only player in the field. One such company is Wild Type. They have already raised $16 million in seed funding to follow their vision of making cultured salmon meat. Along with that, another company is BlueNalu who has raised over $60 million to produce cultured seafood as the first cellular aquaculture company.
So, How Do They Make Fish Without The Fins?
Cell-cultured seafood relies on the extraction of cells from fish, mollusks, or crustaceans to propagate them in a lab setting. More specifically, they isolate myosatellite stem cells from a fish biopsy — without harming the planet, ecosystems, or any fish. These myosatellite stem cells are simply adult muscle stem cells that will eventually develop muscle. After extracting cells from the biopsy, the myosatellite stem cells are separated from the fat cells. Instead of growing into muscle within the animal’s body, Finless Foods and other companies grow the stem cells in-vitro.
“In-vitro” means “in glass” — as in a test tube or petri dish. The process is simple. The stem cells are placed inside a Petri dish, on a nutrient-based medium, that will feed the cells. The growth medium feeds the cells as they proliferate into many more cells. Although, right now, they are using Petri dishes, when the companies scale up production they will grow their meat in bio-reactor tanks.
Then, the isolated cell sample is grown on a scaffold — which is a tissue engineering technique that helps cells grow into tissue. The scaffold mimics extracellular matrixes (ECMs) which are found within bodies of many living things, and help cells grow and form tissues. The result is edible seafood with the texture and structure of wild-caught fish we know and love.
The Benefits of Growing Our Fish In Labs
This revolutionary technology may be the key to repopulating the world’s oceans, now decimated by overfishing, illegal fishing, poulltion, and a series of various other environmental calamities.
Cell-cultured seafood has the potential to also become a champion of animal welfare, as it could spare billions of living creatures from being fished and farmed in suboptimal conditions. The technology also promises to address health concerns, as wild-caught seafood can contain mercury, toxins, pathogens, and micro-particles of plastic, among other things.
Using this technology also can transform the fish we eat like we’ve never imagined. Since producing fish in a lab occurs at the cellular level, we can alter and examine the flavors, fats, and proteins that make up the fish. For instance, we can make fish healthier by decreasing the amount of saturated fat or increasing the amount of protein.
Fish will also become more affordable. Continuing to get our fish using the traditional method will cause price increases like never before. Now, using the technology from the companies we will have more supply to meet the growing demand.
All these benefits make cell-cultured seafood highly attractive, from making the world a healthier, cleaner, and more sustainable place. But some challenges lie ahead.
Current Challenges To Overcome
Although there are clear advantages of the cell-cultured seafood, it is crucial to understand current setbacks of the technology in order to get past these issues. First, the tissue engineering skills are not yet advanced enough to create complex structures of seafood such as an entire salmon or squid.
But then there is the question of costs. We have seen this problem occur before — products made with revolutionary technologies are often very expensive at first. As a result, many consumers might think twice before purchasing cell-cultured fish products. However, there is reason to be optimistic — prices of lab-grown meat have already declined sharply and are expected to reach regular meat prices soon.
The hope is that once these products (a) taste good and (b) are cost effective, they could replace a significant portion — if not all — of traditional seafood. Especially because of the fact that cultured meat and fish could save our world’s oceans and sustain our resources for a growing population, we need to implement this technology more than ever.
Finless Foods along with various other cellular agriculture companies are addressing the biggest challenges of our generation: climate change, overfishing, and overpopulation, while promoting healthy, clean seafood. And if you didn’t believe it before, you better believe it now when I say that cellular agriculture is the solution.
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