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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

seafood

With $5.2M in New Funding, Forsea Forgoes Scaffolding in Attempt to Create Faster Path to Cultivated Meat

Cultivated meat, meet the organoid.

The rapid advance of technology used to create these small, three-dimensional collections of cells grown outside of a living being has created excitement over the past decade-plus in the medical research community, but now a startup named Foresea wants to use organoid technology not to save human lives, but instead that of eels and other seafood. The Israel-based startup, which today announced $5.2 million in seed funding according to a release sent to The Spoon, has developed a technology that utilizes organoids grown in bioreactors to produce eel meat.

According to the company, using organoids allows it to bypass the use of scaffolding, the technology typically used in cultivated meat creation to give meat its structure and texture. Forsea also claims that its technology can grow cultivated meat with fewer bioreactors as well as significantly less growth factors than is typically used in the cultivated meat creation process.

“While cell cultivation largely focuses on a system of directed differentiation, where cells are signaled to differentiate into a specific cell type and are then combined on a scaffold, our system grows the aggregate of the various cells already at the initial stage of the process,” Iftach Nachman, a cofounder of Foresea and inventor of the technology, explained. “The cells organize themselves autonomously into their innate, purposed structure, just as in nature.”

Forsea makes a point in their announcement that their technology creates standalone organisms utilizing an ex vivo methodology. This means that unlike in vitro (which literally translates to “in glass”) approaches where cells are isolated and separated from their natural biological surroundings, Foresea’s organoids are taken from living organisms and grown with minimal alteration from their natural conditions.

Forsea’s is one among a string of announcements over the past year focused on producing proteins at lower cost and with higher efficiency. Whether through new hybrid techniques, lower-cost growth factors, or new approaches to infrastructure, the cultivated meat industry’s focus has shifted beyond proving bench-scale viability to creating scalable solutions for mass-market production. With the introduction of the organoid as a platform for cultivated meat, Forsea has put an intriguing new approach on our watch list for the future of food.

Sea & Believe is Making Plant-Based Whole Cut ‘Cod’ That Flakes Like Real Fish

Sea & Believe is a little different than the typical IndieBio company in that they already have a successful product on the market. The Ireland-based company sells two alt-fish products, an Irish seaweed burger and seaweed goujons, and today they are available in 50 stores across Ireland.

But as the company showed last week at IndieBio’s Demo Day, they are close to launching what they see as their biggest breakthrough yet: a plant-based whole-cut filet of ‘cod’ that flakes like real fish.

For company founder Jennifer O’Brien, Irish seaweed is a natural choice as a foundational building block for an alt-seafood product. Growing up in Ireland, O’Brien would eat seaweed to find relief for chronic asthma. The more she studied it, the more she realized the other benefits of seaweed, including its ability to deacidify the ocean, sequestering carbon at a rate three times higher per acre than forests.

“I knew then that there was something special about Irish seaweed,” O’Brien told IndieBio. “I wanted to learn about its properties and figure out how to scale that into a business some day.”

Sea & Believe’s Jennifer O’Brien and Piyali Chakraborty

That dream eventually led her to found Sea & Believe, where she and Chief Technology Officer Piyali Chakraborty would eventually launch their first couple of products and start to develop their white cod filet. The company believes the filet, which will have up to 25 grams of protein, will be the first plant-based seafood product to flake just like the real thing.

The company is raising funds to continue the development of its cod and to build out its seaweed supply chain, including a seaweed farm in northwest Ireland. They are working with two Irish agencies – Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), the Irish seafood development agency, and Údarás na Gaeltachta (UnAg), a regional Irish economic development agency – to help train local fisherman to harvest seaweed on 500 meter rope lines.

The company is looking to raise $3 million in seed funding. With a product already on the market and a successful prototype for flaky plant-based cod, I imagine it won’t take long given the growing interest in alt-seafood.

You can watch their pitch video below to learn more.

Sea & Believe (IndieBio SF Demo Day 12)

UPSIDE Foods Adds Cell-Cultured Seafood to the Menu With Acquisition of Cultured Decadence

Today UPSIDE Foods announced they have acquired Cultured Decadence. The deal adds cell-cultured seafood products, including lobster and other crustaceans, to the UPSIDE portfolio.

Cultured Decadence, which was a Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Show finalist in 2020, was founded in Milwaukee the same year and will remain in the midwest, serving as UPSIDE’s ‘midwest hub.’

The news comes just a couple of months after the opening of UPSIDE’s flagship scale-up production facility in Berkeley. While the company has announced that cultivated chicken will be its first commercially available product, they have made it clear that their new facility will be able to produce a variety of different cell-cultured animal products.

“Seafood has a rich and delicious culinary tradition that makes it a favorite across the globe,” said Dr. Uma Valeti, Founder and CEO of UPSIDE Foods. “Cultured Decadence’s technology is incredibly promising, and their team is filled with passionate, smart individuals who want to make our favorite food a force for good. We’re thrilled to welcome the Cultured Decadence team to the UPSIDE family and are excited that the scientific, technological, and production infrastructure we have built over many years can help accelerate the mission impact of this team.”

One factor that may have made Cultured Decadance attractive – outside of the addition of cell-cultured seafood to the UPSIDE’s portfolio – is the difference in regulatory oversite in the US between seafood and poultry. The USDA and the FDA struck an agreement early on that the USDA will oversee the labeling framework for livestock and poultry, while the FDA will be the sole body regulating food products made with fish (except, for some reason, catfish, which the USDA oversees). Not only has the FDA had a year’s head start on the USDA in seeking public comments for the labeling of cell-cultured products, but some in the industry believe that the FDA might provide an easier regulatory glide path towards commercial availability when it comes to cultivated meat products.

Outside of regulatory considerations, it’s likely that UPSIDE’s development of its cell-cultured poultry products is further along than the much younger – and smaller – Cultured Decadence’s products, which may still require some significant cell-line development. UPSIDE has already had tastings of its products and they have been working towards commercial scale-up in their new flagship facility.

Finally, the acquisition by UPSIDE could also be an early sign of forthcoming consolidation by cell-cultured meat companies. Guessing by size of some of the recent funding rounds (including UPSIDE’s), it’s clear that the cost of bringing a cell-cultured meat product to scale will likely be in the tens to hundreds of millions, and at some point, it makes more sense for companies in this space to leverage existing investment in pilot and scale-up production infrastructure.

North Carolina’s Pearlita Foods Wants to Create Cell-Cultured Oysters

While much of the world’s sea life is under duress due to climate change and acidification, oysters have it particularly bad because of where they live. Because oysters live in coastal reefs, bays, and estuaries, acidification and other problems related to global warming are extremely difficult to solve for due to a highly varied and complicated environment.

While scientists and oyster farmers are rightly worried about the long-term survival of oyster populations and are looking for ways to help them adapt to a fast-changing environment, others are trying to think of new ways to reduce how many ocean-born oysters are consumed by humans. While traditionally that has meant a focus on hatcheries, a new startup has another idea: cellular agriculture.

Pearlita Foods is hoping to create the world’s first cell-cultivated line of oysters. The company, which has received its initial funding from Big Idea Ventures and Sustainable Food Ventures, launched this month. Its two co-founders, Nikita Michelsen (CEO) and marine biologist Joey Peters, are setting up shop in startup-friendly (and coastline adjacent) North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

“Not only is North Carolina the second-largest estuarine system in the country, it is also the fastest-growing biotech and future of food hub,” said Michelsen. “We will be close to the ecosystems where Oysters thrive and amongst other entrepreneurs – both which we believe will accelerate our growth.”

Over the past year, several startups have taken aim at creating new and more sustainable options for seafood, whether that be plant-based, cell-cultured, or through fermentation. One category of fish we haven’t seen is cell-cultured mollusks, but given the size of the oyster industry, it makes sense that we’d see a startup focused on creating oysters using cellular agriculture.

Another reason to celebrate the idea of cell-cultured oysters is they won’t have all the contaminants and bacteria concerns that plague natural-habitat harvested oysters. Unfortunately, oysters born in the wild are often contaminated with metals like lead, mercury, and zinc and can also be hotbeds for bacteria. Cell-ag derived oysters would be free of contaminants.

While at this point, Pearlita isn’t giving any guidance on their timelines, my guess is it will be a year or two before we see prototypes. You can follow their progress on their website.

Researchers Have Developed a Chameleon-Inspired Solution to Keep Fish Fresh

Red light, green light. Your first thought may be Squid Game, but these two colors are part of new food technology used for real squid.

Researchers invented a material that changes color to measure how fresh seafood is, inspired by (you guessed it) chameleons. It can save consumers from eating spoiled fish and can keep food waste out of landfills.

Why does your fish smell so fishy?

You probably are familiar with fish that smells… well, too fishy. This unpleasant odor comes from volatile gases in seafood, such as dimethylamine or ammonia. As the temperature of fish rises, its acidity changes, and ammonia is released.

Your salmon or shrimp has definitely spoiled if you can smell this gas — but ammonia can increase to dangerous levels before your nose can detect it. “Seafood easily spoils due to microbial growth that produces volatile amine gases,” said researcher Tao Chen in an interview.

A key part of seafood production is the ability to detect these volatile gases. Current standards take about four hours to find ammonia or dimethylamine in just one sample of fish.

Imagine if the commercial fishing industry had to set aside four hours for every piece of fish in their warehouse. The process would take days, and all the food would be at risk for spoiling. In reality, most fish inspections are done visually and are highly prone to error.

Here is where a team of food scientists and chemists enters the picture. New technology from Chen and his team at the Key Laboratory of Marine Materials detects when seafood has spoiled.

Chameleon skin inspired this material.

The skin of a chameleon can shift its hue to blend into different environments in just a few seconds. In a similar show of colors, the hydrogel can change its fluorescence from red to blue to green in a few minutes. These three colors allow scientists to visualize changes in response to stimuli.

The hydrogel changes color as heat and ammonia levels rise. The technology is easy to use, as the hydrogel can be placed directly into any package to check if fish or shellfish are safe to eat. Though customers should not eat the gel, it will not affect the product’s taste.

The soft material is unique in its ability to change colors. Both chemists and material engineers have struggled to design a synthetic fabric that could change colors. Until this study, scientists have been unable to model the structure of panther chameleon skin in a lab.

“Is it possible to mimic this unique structure into artificial color-changing materials? As described in our paper, the answer is yes,” Chen said.

“Up to now, the responsive color-changing capacity of synthetic materials was still far inferior to that of the natural chameleon skin,” researcher Patrick Théato said in an interview. Théato collaborated with the team in China for this bio-inspired project.

Science: Taste the rainbow.

The team discovered that the secret was in the separation. Instead of placing all fluorescent materials onto one sheet, each color has its own layer.

As seen in the diagram below, at the core of the hydrogel is a red layer that stays true to its hue. A middle blue layer measures the temperature of the seafood, and an outer green layer tests acidity and ammonia levels.

The hydrogel changes color in the presence of ammonia (NH3) or heat. It shifts to a green hue when ammonia is present or becomes more purple as the temperature rises. At either end of the spectrum, the fish in question is unsafe to eat.

The blue hydrogel layer changes color from purplish red to blue when the temperature rises. At 20º Celsius, the material appears to be purple or red, and when the heat rises to 50º Celsius, the hydrogel turns blue. The whole hydrogel turns green when ammonia is present and has no color change if ammonia is not present in the sample.

Not only do the different layers mimic the skin of a chameleon, but they also let scientists test the environmental variables on their own. Existing methods combine heat and ammonia into one reading and are less accurate. For example, current technologies would likely miss a slight change in acidity if the temperature stayed static.

Almost one-third of food in China is wasted.

Chen spoke to his personal motivation to create seafood-focused technology. His team hails from Ningbo, a coastal metropolis in China. “Many people in this city love seafood very much,” Chen said.

However, a significant amount of this catch ends up in landfills. A new study shows that 27% of all food in China is wasted per year. To put that number in perspective, food waste emissions in China are equal to total emissions in the United Kingdom.

How is the country keeping food out of the garbage? Well, President Xi Jinping declared war on food waste last year. As of April 2020, it is illegal to order too much food at a restaurant. ‘Mukbang‘ videos are similarly discouraged and were removed from many social media sites.

Another potential solution? The hydrogel. It can help reduce food waste on an industrial level. Commercial fisheries can use the gel for faster and more accurate readings and take immediate action if some of their seafood is beginning to spoil.

Color in cephalopods.

Théato, Chen, and many of their collaborators are working on a new project inspired by a different type of animal: Cephalopods.

These ocean dwellers – cuttlefish and squids, to name a few – are masters of camouflage. They can change their color faster than a chameleon. The researchers are creating a fluorescent hydrogel that takes notes from octopuses.

The team’s original hydrogel looked to acidity or temperature as the catalyst for color change. The new version has an electric stimulus, which is easier to control and free from any chemicals. It is currently under development for larger-scale applications.

Seems that octopuses are teaching us, after all.

S2G Ventures to Invest $100M in Seafood and Ocean Health Startups

Food and agriculture venture fund S2G Ventures announced today that it is launching a new seafood and ocean health strategy and will be investing $100 million startups across the sector.

From S2G’s press release announcing the new initiative:

S2G’s oceans and seafood strategy will seek to invest in early, venture, and growth stage companies globally across thematic areas including seafood and alternative protein sources, aquaculture and supply chain innovation, traceability/transparency, algae/seaweed, and ecosystem services.

S2G has made a number of investments in other emerging areas of sustainable food production including: Beyond Meat, one of the largest makers of plant-based meats; Apeel Sciences, which makes a coating to extend the shelf-life of produce; and MycoTechnology, which creates alternative protein and other food additives out of fermented mushrooms.

The alternative seafood space is actually pretty hot right now, with a number of companies in various stages of coming to market. Shiok Meats partnered with Integriculture last month to scale up its cultured shrimp. Earlier this summer BlueNalu announced a new facility opening next year that will produce its cell cultured fish. And the venture arm of food giant General Mills invested in plant-based seafood company, Good Catch at the start of this year.

One hundred million isn’t exactly chump change. Hopefully S2G new strategy will be able to help get innovations we don’t even know about yet off the ground and bring about real change to the current state of our seafood and ocean health.

S2G also announced that Kate Danaher and Larsen Mettler have joined the firm as Managing Directors to manage the new seafood and ocean health strategy.

General Mills Invests in Good Catch’s $32M Series B to Expand Plant-based Seafood

Today Gathered Foods, makers of Good Catch plant-based seafood, announced it has closed a $32 million Series B round. Led by Stray Dog Capital and Rocana Ventures, other participants included Greenleaf Foods, New Crop Capital, Almanac Investments, CPT Capital and 301 INC (the venture arm of General Mills).

Good Catch’s plant-based tuna — made with 6 different plant proteins and algal oil — is currently available at 4,500 retail locations in the U.S., including Whole Foods. It will be moving into the U.K. market over the next few weeks.

This Series B builds on a $10 million convertible note round that Gathered Foods closed back in June 2019. Combined with its $8.7 million Series A, which it announced in August 2018, the New York-based startup has raised just under $41 million.

According to a press release, the net proceeds from the investment will go towards expanding Good Catch’s retail footprint across North America and Europe, as well as a push into Asia. The company will also use its fresh capital to develop new products — like the line of frozen entrées and vegan “crab” cakes it had previously teased for release later this year.

Just after news of the convertible note broke last year, Chris Kerr, co-founder and CEO of Gathered Foods, told NOSH that their upcoming larger round would include a “game changing” new investor.

That’s got to be 301 INC. The Good Catch investment is not the CPG giant’s first foray into the plant-based marketplace. 301 INC has already invested in Kite Hill, maker of animal-free dairy products, and vegan protein bar startup no cow. They were also an early investor in a little old company called Beyond Meat.

301 INC’s investment in Gathered Food certainly beefs up the CPG giant’s plant-based portfolio. It could also offer significant benefits to Good Catch; the startup will be able to leverage General Mills’ manufacturing expertise, R&D resources and retail relationships to accelerate new product development and gain placement on more grocery shelves.

Alternative seafood will also have the chance to play a larger role as fish stocks dwindle due to overfishing and the rise of ocean mercury levels. Good Catch isn’t the only one trying to get ahead of the curve. Sophie’s Kitchen makes vegan canned tuna and Ocean Hugger Foods turns tomatoes and eggplant into plant-based raw fish for sushi (and is also sold at Whole Foods). Back in September, New Wave Foods, which makes ‘shrimp’ from plants, snagged an investment from Tyson.

The rising investor interest in seafood alternatives mirrors consumers’ rising demand for plant-based everything. While grocery shelves are filling up with meatless burgers, hot dogs, and soon, ground pork, vegan seafood is an area that still has relatively few players — and lots of room for improvement. With this Series B round — and especially General Mills’ participation — Good Catch just got a significant leg — er, fin — up.

BluePlanet Ecosystems’ Aquaculture System Mimics Nature to Grow Fish Sustainably

Globally, the U.S. gets over one half of all its seafood from aquaculture. The process is meant to give some relief to overfished ocean stocks and create a more reliable seafood source, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

“The problem is that the production method is still connected to the oceans,” said Paul Schmitzberger, CEO and co-founder of BluePlanet Ecosystems, over the phone. He explained that farmed fish are often fed small fish caught from oceans, and the smaller fish might contain mercury or microplastics. And even when fish farms use soy for their animal feed, it comes with an environmental cost all its own.

But what if the aquaculture farms could produce their own food and repurpose their own waste, just like in natural ecosystems? Schmitzberger and his team at BluePlanet Ecosystems, which was incorporated in 2018, set out to do just that.

The Austrian company’s LARA (Land-based Automated Recirculating Aquaculture) is a completely turnkey system which consists of three horizontal units stacked on top of each other. The top unit uses energy from the sun to grow microalgae, the “power source” for the entire system. The microalgae is then pumped down to the second unit where it feeds tiny zooplankton. Finally, the zooplankton is moved down to the bottom unit, where it’s eaten by fish and crustaceans. Any waste from the sea life is recirculated up to the top to be used as food for the algae.

In short, it’s a completely contained system that grows seafood without the need to input any food or extract any waste.

When I first heard about the LARA, I had one question: Why had nobody else done this before? According to Schmitzberger, the answer is because it’s extremely difficult to manage. Without constant monitoring, the delicate balance of algae/zooplankton/seafood can get out of whack and ruin the whole system.

However, BluePlanet Ecosystems believes they can do what others couldn’t by adding something that nature doesn’t have: high tech. The startup uses a combination of water sensors, computer vision and machine learning to constantly monitor and optimize the dynamics of the tanks. “We’re monitoring every organism in the system,” said Schmitzberger.

For example, if the cameras notice there are too many plankton in the middle tank, the system will automatically activate a water pump to flush a portion of those plankton out to be eaten. If the software recognizes that a fish is sick, it can alert managers to look for a root cause before the rest of the population falls ill.

The LARAs can fit in 40-ton shipping containers and contain 100 cubic meters of water. They’re modular, so companies can connect multiple units together to be managed under BluePlanet’s software. The units will cost about $50,000 each plus a recurring $2,500 fee for every ton of seafood produced through the system, which Schmitzberger estimates companies should be able to recoup in four to five years. He said they hope to start constructing full-size prototypes over the next six months, with plans to deliver them at the beginning of 2021.

BluePlanet Ecosystems just signed a letter of intent with Singapore largest caterer, sats, which processes 100 tons of seafood every month. They have $250,000 in funding from IndieBio and are currently raising a seed round for $2.8 million.

Several companies are already putting parts of the LARA system in practice. TimberFish has a no-waste aquaculture system based upon brewery waste and woodchips. Aquabyte uses machine learning and computer vision to optimize fish maintenance in seafood farm pens. However, BluePlanet combines both of those value-adds into one — and promises to do it without any necessary inputs.

As of yet, LARAs are untested and expensive. But if they work as promised, we might see our farmed seafood sources become gradually more and more sustainable.

Good Catch Hooks $10M in Funding for its Plant-Based Tuna

Yesterday Gathered Foods, the company behind Good Catch plant-based seafood, announced that it had closed a $10 million convertible note round. According to Forbes, the round was led by animal-free protein funds New Crop Capital and Stray Dog Capital. Along with last year’s $8.7 million Series A, this latest round should bring Gathered Foods’ total funding to roughly $18.7 million.

Good Catch makes plant-based tuna using a 6-protein blend and algal oil to give it that distinct ocean-y taste. Each 3.3-ounce pouch of Good Catch tuna — which comes in three flavors — has 14 grams of protein and costs around $4.99. Gathered Foods is also developing a line of frozen entrées, like vegan “crab” cakes and fish-free “whitefish” burgers, which will be available in spring of 2020.

The company will use its new funds to scale production of Good Catch’s plant-based seafood. No wonder — in February of this year the company started rolling out its products in Whole Foods as well as through online grocery providers FreshDirect and Thrive Market. However, their Whole Foods exclusivity ended on May 1st, so we’ll likely start to see them popping up in even more retailers.

To keep up with increased distribution, Gathered Foods is currently building a $20 million manufacturing facility in Ohio which will be able to make a variety of plant-based proteins. Seeing as Good Catch is coming out with a line of faux crab and fish patties, this flexibility makes a lot of sense. They’re aiming to finish the new facility by the end of this year — hopefully that will help them avoid the supply issues other plant-based meat companies have been struggling with as of late.

Good Catch isn’t the only one trying to disrupt the seafood industry with more sustainable, plant-based options. Sophie’s Kitchen has a vegan canned “toona” from springy Japanese yam, and Ocean Hugger Foods turns tomatoes and eggplant into plant-based alternatives to raw fish for sushi.

As cool as all these are, to me they’re just a stop-gap until lab-grown seafood comes to market. Quite a few companies are working on it — Wild Type makes cell-based lox, Shiok Meats makes cultured shrimp, and Finless Foods is developing lab-grown tuna.

Due to high costs, scaling difficulties and regulatory hurdles, however, it’ll be quite a few years before cell-based seafood shows up at our local Whole Foods. Let’s see how far Good Catch gets before then.

Wild Type Debuts New Cultured Salmon in Largest Tasting of Lab-Grown Meat

Last week Wild Type, the West Coast startup growing salmon in a lab, had the first large-scale taste test of its new product.

In a Medium post, the company detailed a test dinner at Portland, Oregon’s Olympia Oyster bar, which included an assortment of cell-based salmon dishes based on “a variety of culinary traditions.” Menu items included Ceviche Verde, salmon tartare, Hawaiian poke, and spicy salmon sushi rolls, all made with the cultured fish. The dinner, which the company claims was the first to feature cell-based food so extensively, wasn’t open to the public, so there’s no indication how good the cultured fish actually tasted.

Founded in 2016, Wild Type raised a $3.5 million seed round to expand its cell-based salmon R&D in 2018. The company plans to initially release minced salmon and lox and work its way up to full-size filets.

It still has quite a few hurdles to overcome. As with most cellular agriculture (or aquaculture) companies, it can only produce relatively small pieces of lab-grown meat due to scaffolding challenges and other growth constraints.

Wild Type’s salmon can also only be served raw. If it’s heated above 212°F, it will become too flaky fall apart. According to Bloomberg the company plans to debut a new version of the salmon that can be cooked in the next few months.

Pricing is also an issue. The company hopes to sell their salmon at a competitive price to real farmed Atlantic salmon: $7 to $8 per pound. As of now, they estimate that the spicy salmon roll served at the dinner cost a whopping $200 to produce. However cellular agriculture/aquaculture companies are rapidly reducing the cost it takes to make cultured meat, mostly due to improvements in growth media, so it’s likely pricing will go down soon.

Wild Type isn’t the only company trying to get in on the seafood alternative market. Finless Foods is hoping to bring its cell-based bluefin tuna to market by the end of 2019, though likely in a very limited release. In Singapore, Shiok Meats is developing cell-based shrimp (and racking up serious funding along the way), and Avant Meats is making lab-grown fish maw in Hong Kong.

It’ll still be a while until we taste any sort of cultured meat or seafood due to high costs, low production capacity, and regulatory hurdles. Wild Type has yet to release a go-to-market date for their cell-based salmon, but some speculate it’ll be as much as 10 years from now.

However, several plant-based seafood companies are already vying for our plates. Good Catch’s plant-based tuna is now available at Whole Foods, and Ocean Hugger Foods makes alternatives to raw tuna and eel out of vegetables. These options may all be better for the environment than fishing or even growing fish cells in a lab, but at least from my experience, it’s much harder to make plants taste like fish than it is to make them taste like a juicy burger.

Regardless, we have to do something about our dwindling seafood supply. Our oceans are rapidly being depleted through overfishing and aquaculture has its own set of issues. If companies like Wild Type can produce tasty fish to relieve some of the pressure from our oceans, I’m all for it. Even if I have to wait a while to try lab-grown spicy tuna sushi for myself.

Ocean Hugger Foods to Unveil Plant-Based “Eel” Sushi at National Restaurant Association Show

There will be aisles and aisles of new technology to see and taste at this weekend’s National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. But I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar that there will only be one plant-based eel sushi.

Ocean Hugger Foods is debuting its new vegan eel, called unami at the show this weekend. It’s made from eggplant, which the company processes to imitate the texture of eel, as well as soy sauce, mirin, and algae oil for flavor.

This will be the second product from the New York-based startup, which already makes ahimi, a plant-based alternative to raw tuna made from tomatoes. (Next up they’re launching a vegan “salmon” made from carrots to be called sakimi.)

The company hasn’t announced when or where its unami will be sold. I’m guessing it’ll join sushi lineups alongside their ahimi, which is available in around 90 restaurants and grocery stores, including Whole Foods.

A few months ago I predicted that vegan sushi — that is, sushi that uses realistic plant-based raw fish, not just California rolls — would become a growing market. Ocean Hugger Foods isn’t the only one in the space: across the pond in the U.K., plant-based food company Ima is selling sushi made with a vegan salmon substitute.

Eel isn’t quite as popular a sushi selection as tuna or salmon, but it’s rapidly disappearing due to climate change and overfishing. In fact, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch List lists eel as “one of the worst seafood choices from an environmental perspective.”

It may not be America’s #1 sushi choice, but the New York-based company is smart to diversify its product range before other companies jump in and stake their claim with plant-based sashimi. Plus, since eel is chiefly consumed in Japan and China, maybe this product will help Ocean Hugger Food expand into the plant-based protein-hungry Asian market.

If you’re in Chicago this weekend and have a chance to sample Ocean Hugger Foods’ unami, leave us a comment and tell us what you thought.

Avant Meats Develops Cultured Seafood (Fish Maw, Sea Cucumber) for a Chinese Audience

Last week we wrote a think piece about how cultured meat — that is, meat grown outside the animal in a lab setting — will likely debut in Asia. Part of the reasoning behind this is because of all the innovative cellular agriculture startups popping up in the area, targeting local cultural demands and restrictions.

One of said innovative startups is Avant Meats, a new cell-based meat company operating out of Hong Kong. Avant Meats isn’t developing cultured burgers, sausages, steaks, or tuna — but fish maw.

Many Westerners (the author included) have never come across fish maw, or dried swim bladder. Upon first glance it might seem like an odd choice. But there are a few very good reasons why Avant Meats is starting with this particular food item:

First and foremost, it’s easy(er) to make. Unlike a cut of meat like steak, which requires muscle cells, fat cells, and connective tissue, fish maw is made up of only one cell type. That simplicity allows Avant Meats to grow a fish maw from scratch in as little as one and a half months. “The route to scaling up is much simpler,” Avant Meats CEO and co-founder Carrie Chan told me over the phone.

The choice of fish maw was also a strategic nod to Avant Meats’ target demographic: consumers in China and Hong Kong. “Our food culture is very different from the West,” said Chan. Dried fish swim bladder is considered a delicacy in traditional Chinese cuisine, prized for its texture and purported health benefits.

There’s also an environmental aspect at play. Fish maw is in such high demand in China that the two main fish species that are hunted for it — Bahaba and Totoba — are on the brink of extinction. There are even black markets dedicated to the bladders, which can fetch up to HK$1 million ($~127,000) per kilogram. “It’s similar to shark fin,” explained Chan.

Finally, there’s a health and safety consideration. China struggles with food traceability issues. In fact, last year a study from Food Control found that more than half of the fish fillets sold under commercial brands were mislabeled. By growing food in a lab — especially products as rare and coveted as fish maw — consumers can know exactly what they’re getting and where it came from.

Photo: Photo by Duangphorn Wiriya on Unsplash.

As noted in the intro, Avant Meats isn’t the only cell-based meat company targeting Asia as their launch pad. JUST, who is aiming to be the first to bring cultured meat to market, announced recently that the product will likely debut in Asia. In Singapore, Shiok Meats is developing cell-based crustaceans. Part of the reason so many cultured meat companies are looking to Asia is because it has relatively looser regulatory standards, especially in Hong Kong.

Chan was hesitant to speak too much about the regulatory framework in Hong Kong, where Avant Meats is headquartered, but did admit that it’s an ideal place to launch a new food product. “It has a very robust market and lots of disposable income,” she told me.

Though they have a very developed strategy, Avant Meats is a very new startup — even in a field that’s quite new itself. Chan started the company in July of last year, and was recently joined by Dr. Mario Chin, her co-founder and the company’s CSO (and only other employee).

Considering their late start and lean team, Avant Meats likely won’t be part of the first wave of companies selling clean meat. Chan said that they expect to have a commercial product out in three to four years, though they’ll be doing taste tests of their fish maw in Q3 or Q4 of this year. But she believes their strategy to start with a simple, unique product will help them stand out. “We’re starting behind the other guys, so we better find something that’s commercially more pragmatic,” she explained.

Fish maw is just the first stepping stone for the company. Down the road, Avant Meats will expand their lineup, developing more complex seafood products. Chan told me that next they’ll look into making sea cucumber. Their end goal is to make an entire fish filet, likely using some scaffolding to help emulate the texture.

Chan didn’t specify what type of fish they would be tackling. There are a couple cellular aquaculture companies further along in the development process. Finless Foods is developing cell-based bluefin tuna, and Wild Type is growing salmon.

However, both these companies are based in the U.S. Avant Meats’ Hong Kong HQ and strategic product choice could help them stand out in a field that’s getting more exciting — and more crowded — by the day.