Lab-grown seafood is hitting restaurant menus. Would you eat it?

Washington Post

12 hours ago

The dinner special at Kann, a Haitian restaurant in Portland, features cubes of salmon with pickled strawberries and spiced tomatoes. It's served with a rice cracker and a bold claim: 'Be the first in the world to taste the future of sustainable seafood.'
The Coho salmon, pinkish orange and streaked with lines of white fat, wasn't wild-caught in Alaska or farmed in Chile. It comes from cells grown in tanks at a former microbrewery in San Francisco, and in late May it became the first cell-cultured seafood to receive safety approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
This salmon is intended to be consumed raw, like sushi, or cured, as in ceviche. Kann is the first restaurant to offer it, incorporating it in that light summer dish. Austin-based chef Yoshi Okai served it as sashimi at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic this month and will be including it in the omakase lineup at his Texas restaurant starting in mid July.
At least two lab-grown chicken products have previously gotten the FDA's green light. But the okay for the salmon, made by California-based Wildtype, marks a significant milestone for the alternative protein industry, which has been working to produce substitutes for traditional meat and fish that can help meet the world's growing demand for food while minimizing environmental and climate impacts.
'We're not looking to put fishermen out of business, we are not looking to eliminate the need for fish farming,' said Justin Kolbeck, a Wildtype co-founder. 'The amount of seafood that is currently in demand, and where it's projected to go, are so high we actually need all of the production that we're doing from those other tools, plus ours, plus maybe some help from the plant-based world, to be able to meet that demand.'
While alternative protein can be made from plants or fermentation, cultivated seafood primarily comes from animal cells. Cells are isolated from specific species, providing the material needed to establish continually usable cell lines.
At Wildtype, cells derived from Pacific salmon are grown in big steel tanks and fed with a mix of nutrients, including amino acids, vitamins, salts, sugars, proteins and fats.
'Imagine kind of a fancy Gatorade,' Kolbeck said.
He described how the cells are then rinsed in a centrifuge and transferred into a commercial kitchen, where they're mixed with plant-based ingredients to help create form and structure and provide further nutritional elements.
The entire process takes about two weeks to create a 220-gram, uniformly cut block of fish.
By comparison, it can take at least two years for a living salmon to mature.
Seafood, especially fish, is a key source of protein for billions of people around the world — a number that is projected to rise significantly in the coming years. One 2021 study estimated that global fish consumption will increase nearly 80 percent by 2050.
But wild stocks are being threatened by overfishing, and while farmed seafood has helped alleviate some of that burden, aquaculture can have its own environmental challenges.
Human-made alternatives could be particularly helpful for popular types of seafood, such as tuna and salmon, said Max Valentine, senior scientist and director of Oceana's illegal fishing and transparency campaign. 'It shouldn't be seen as the Holy Grail to save oceans, but I do think it would provide an avenue for alternatives to reduce pressure,' she said.
'We're addressing food security,' said Lou Cooperhouse, founder and president of BlueNalu, a San Diego-based company making cell-cultured bluefin tuna. 'Wildtype's approval was really great for the whole industry.'
These sorts of products could also be options for consumers who are wary of contaminants that may be found in wild-caught and farmed fish, said Aryé Elfenbein, a Wildtype co-founder.
What's more, cell-cultured seafood could help cut down on waste, since lab-cultivated blocks of protein can be used in their entirety and don't create leftover scraps.
'The first slice is the same as the last slice,' Kolbeck said.
Some proponents of lab-grown seafood have touted additional environmental benefits, including fewer emissions and less harm to ocean ecosystems.
Cooperhouse said making BlueNalu's sushi tuna toro product requires energy and water but that the company's estimated footprint 'pales in comparison' to the impact of commercial fishing.
While BlueNalu and other companies have done assessments of their environmental impact, some experts say an accurate picture might not be possible without production facilities being at full scale.
'I haven't seen any really comprehensive life cycle analysis on the comparison of this technology to other technologies,' said Sebastian Belle, president of the National Aquaculture Association, a trade group. 'At the end of the day, that's really what we need to really understand is it better or is it the same or is it worse? And we need do that science.'
For cell-cultivated seafood to really take off, there needs to be an appetite for it.
'We're just beginning this journey, and the big question that everybody has is what will the consumer response be?' Belle said.
Consumer interest in alternative proteins has appeared to plateau in recent years. Meanwhile, several states have moved to ban cell-derived meat, and in certain cases, such as Florida, have broadened restrictions to include seafood. In turn, some cultivated seafood companies say it has been challenging to entice investors.
'A lot of potential investors, I think, are trepidatious,' Kolbeck said. 'Specifically those who maybe have had some investments in the plant-based space that haven't penned out well and haven't had a great return, they look at this and are like, is this the same thing? Is it not?
'Objectively, capital is a lot harder to find today than it was four years ago,' he continued.
These fish alternatives must match wild-caught or farmed options on price, taste, texture and nutrition, Valentine said. When she tried a lab-grown salmon product several years ago, she said the texture wasn't the same as a traditional filet.
'It kind of gives uncanny valley,' she said. 'It's not quite fish, it's something else.'
But companies such as Wildtype saythey can give consumers what they want.
'Because we're making the product literally from the cell up, we can tune a lot of things based on consumer feedback, like shape, strength of the flavor, even the color,' Kolbeck said. 'Texture is a little bit harder, but it's also something that we could work on. … All of those things are things that we can actually change.'