The ethics of animal consumption for food have been hotly debated ever since the alternatives were created a few years ago and eating a plant based diet or a vegan diet became more of an option and thus more mainstream. A long time has passed since then and meat alternatives have flooded the market, to varying degrees of popularity, but now it is the time for fish, and the alternatives are still scarce. One of the companies invested in this venture is Wildtype and their approach is a bit different as they are not trying for a vegan alternative as such, they are going the lab grown route, and their results are quite impressive.
Since traditional fishing is not nearly enough to sustain the amount of fish that we are consuming and factory fish farms are also straining to meet the demands, something needs to give, and Wildtype believes they have the solution. They have created the first ever lab-grown salmon, and it is called “Wildtype Salmon Saku.” Unlike other vegan alternatives (vegan reflects a process that has not harmed animals in this case, not a plant based alternative) this is real salmon fibers grown from cells taken from juvenile fish and the production process takes place in stainless steel bioreactors, where the cells are nurtured in a nutrient-rich liquid that co-founder Justin Kolbeck describes as “a kind of sophisticated Gatorade.”
What makes this product different is the achieved texture, which is not like any other product on the market. “You can use plants to make minced [style] products pretty easily, but it’s really hard to get a whole-cut type of product, like you’d find in a sushi restaurant,” says Kolbeck. “So that was the challenge we put out for ourselves.”
The new way of producing salmon and other fish for public consumption?
Unlike factory farmed fish, this lab grown version takes about two weeks to grow into a slab of fish that looks, feels, and tastes like the real thing. According to the company, the final product is a 220-gram block that is shaped, textured, and colored to resemble traditional salmon, and since the produced fish in question is not a real animal, there is an additional plus that many may not have considered.
Aryé Elfenbein, co-founder of Wildtype and a molecular biologist, says that with cell-cultured fish, “there are no antibiotics, no heavy metals, no microplastics.”
One of the questions that skeptics have is, if production ramps up and the product is successful, what does this mean for traditional fishing and fish farming? Wildtype has insisted that they do not want to take anyone’s job or shut down existing seafood industries. “We’re not looking to put fishermen out of business, we are not looking to eliminate the need for fish farming,” said Kolbeck “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.”
The new fish pioneered in May in a Portland restaurant called Kann, which made headlines by serving the world’s first-ever lab-grown salmon dish. That is also where Wildtype produces their product, as the city has a reputation as a green, eco-conscious hotspot that would welcome this kind of idea. Plus, Kann is led by Gregory Gourdet, who is a James Beard Award winner and known for his innovation.
The launch was slow and steady, and throughout June, it was only served on Thursday nights, but now it is available every day. The plate includes diced pieces of Wildtype’s salmon, paired with pickled strawberries, tomatoes, and a rice cake, but if that does not pleas your palette, they are expanding soon to Otoko, a Japanese restaurant in Texas that plans to add the salmon to its menu soon.