Lab-Grown Tuna: Freaky Or Revolutionary? Either Way, It’s Here

[dufus]

 

Fish meat is examined in a lab.

 

Bluefin tuna are worth a lot - up to $3 million for a single fish, to be exact. The large price tag is due, in part, to the fish’s status as an endangered species.

 

Together, bluefin tuna’s high value and protected status have made it the ‘holy grail of aquaculture’. Unfortunately, bluefin tuna are not well-suited for farming. While there are currently efforts to make farmed bluefin a mainstream success, the California-based biotech company Finless Foods is taking a different approach; instead of raising fish, Finless Foods is growing bluefin tuna in a laboratory.

 

There are already several vegetarian tuna-alternatives on the market, but these plant-based ‘meats’ will not easily replace tuna in the sushi industry where bluefin tuna is most popular. By growing bluefin tuna meat rather than creating a meat-alternative, Finless Foods hopes to provide a more sustainable, and perhaps cheaper, form of bluefin tuna, while also reducing commercial pressure on wild fish stocks.

 

Kiyoshi Kimura, president of sushi restaurant chain Sushi-Zanmai, poses with a 212-kilogram bluefin tuna at his main restaurant near the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo on January 5, 2017. Japan's self-styled "Tuna King" has done it again -- paying more than 600,000 USD for a single fish. Sushi entrepreneur Kiyoshi Kimura paid top price at the first auction of the new year at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market on January 5, bagging a prized bluefin tuna for an eye-watering 74.2 million yen (636,000 USD). / AFP / Behrouz MEHRI (Photo credit should read BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP via Getty Images)

 

To get from a free-swimming fish to lab-grown meat, the lab must start with a small sample of fish meat. “The biopsy can be as small as a grain of rice, and often is,” explains Michael Selden, CEO of Finless Foods. This means fish already slated to be slaughtered can be used to ‘seed’ the lab-grown meat - no additional bluefin tuna needed. After the initial fish meat is obtained, the rest of the production operates without any impact on wild bluefin tuna whatsoever.

 

Finless Foods uses the fish sample to extract cells that can later be used to grow meat in the lab. This process is tricky, as selectively removing cells from a piece of meat is quite stressful for the cells. The surviving fish cells can be quite fragile: “They need a big cushion to land on,” Selden explains.

 

For cells, a ‘big cushion’ means serum - a nutrient-rich animal by-product that provides the fish cells with the food they need to survive and grow. However, Selden notes that Finless Foods only uses animal by-products, in the form of serum, during the initial extraction of cells performed by the research and development (R&D) arm of Finless Foods.

 

Once healthy cell populations are established, the cells are only fed plant-based ingredients. This is one of the ways Finless Food’s lab-grown fish stands out; by growing the meat of the predatory bluefin tuna using plant-based components, the carbon footprint of lab-grown fish meat will be much smaller than that of the wild fish.

 

From the extracted cells, the lab grows meat - but the result is not quite the same as a wild bluefin tuna steak. “The texture is all wrong,” explains Seldon. “It’s about the texture of hummus.” Finless Foods’ team of food scientists are now working to transform the bluefin tuna-paste into a meaty texture that could be used in sushi.

 

Nonetheless, lab-grown bluefin tuna has a lot of benefits over wild bluefin. For one, lab-grown fish lacks mercury. Wild fish, particularly long-lived predatory fish like bluefin tuna, obtain mercury from the other fish they eat throughout their lifetime by a process known as bioaccumulation. Since the diet of lab-grown cells is closely controlled, no mercury makes it into the meat. For the same reasons, lab-grown fish also lacks microplastics, which can be found on ocean-caught seafood.

 

Lab-grown tuna can also be grown far from where wild tuna are found. For inland communities in particular, this could shake-up the traditionally transportation-intensive seafood industry and further reduce the environmental impact of consuming tuna.

 

While Finless Foods still has some work to do to make their lab-grown tuna ready for your dinner plate, lab-grown tuna may soon be sold at a sushi restaurant near you.

 

sauce

 

fukutuna of the menu