A US restaurant is serving lab-grown salmon, will you have it?

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A Haitian restaurant in the US is serving fresh Coho salmon from a lab in San Fransico with pickled strawberries and spiced tomatoes alongside rice crackers. It features all the attributes of a fish; the pinkish-orange colour and white fat lines striped along the steak read more
Imagine taking a hearty bite of the most sumptuous salmon you have ever seen at a fancy restaurant. But what if we tell you the feast on your plate was not caught from the sea and was grown in a laboratory?
A Haitian restaurant in the US is serving fresh Coho salmon from a lab in San Fransico with pickled strawberries and spiced tomatoes alongside rice crackers. It features all the attributes of a fish; the pinkish-orange colour and white fat lines striped along the steak.
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The restaurant, Kann in Portland, Oregon, has added the dish to its menu after the lab-grown fish became the first cell-cultured seafood to be greenlit by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The approval of the salmon, developed by California-based Wildtype, marks a major milestone for the alternative protein industry. This sector has been striving to create substitutes for conventional meat and seafood that can help address rising global food demand while reducing environmental and climate impacts.
Wildtype co-founder, Justin Kolbeck, told the Washington Post, 'We're not looking to put fishermen out of business, we are not looking to eliminate the need for fish farming. 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.'
How is the fish grown in lab?
Producing animal-based food in the lab is not a new concept. While chicken and other proteins can be easily grown from plants or fermentation, the cultivation of seafood is done by using animal cells.
Wildtype uses cells collected from Pacific salmon, following which they are grown in big steel tanks and fed with a mix of nutrients like amino acids, vitamins, salts, sugars, proteins and fats.
Explaining the process of cultivation, Kolbeck said that the cells are first rinsed in a centrifuge, then moved to a commercial kitchen, where they're blended with plant-based ingredients to add structure, shape, and additional nutritional value.
The entire exercise takes approximately two weeks to create a 220-gram, uniformly cut block of fish.
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What about lab-grown meats?
Lab-grown meats have already made it to American planes, as the US Department of Agriculture approved two companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, to sell them in 2023.
With the approvals, the United States became the second country after Singapore to allow the sale of so-called cultivated meat, which is derived from a sample of livestock cells that are fed and grown in steel vats.
Cultivated meat companies hope their products will provide an appealing alternative for meat eaters looking for a more environmentally friendly and humane option for their cuts, and who may be unsatisfied with vegetarian products already on the market.