San Francisco Startup Hopes to Open Sushi Bar Serving Lab-Grown Salmon (sfchronicle.com) 58
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a startup named Wildtype that hopes to open a unique sushi bar this fall serving salmon grown in a lab:
Like other alternative meat companies, Wildtype hopes it can eventually produce enough fish to be sold at grocery stores and to be served in dishes at Bay Area restaurants... Companies like Wildtype fall into the category of what's known as cell-based agriculture, where instead of plant-based alternatives, animal cells are used to create cuts of meat in a lab. In the case of Wildtype, the company is still working with the same salmon cells it acquired a few years ago to create fish in its lab. These salmon cells are then fed nutrients in the tank before they are harvested and affixed to plant-based structures that enable the cells to grow into a particular cut of the fish.
From the cell stage to harvesting, it can take between three weeks to three months, said Elfenbein. Conventional fish farming can often take upwards of a year before the fish can be harvested...
The company is still working to get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to open its sushi bar to the public, though Kolbeck is hopeful that might happen by the end of this year. Unlike plant-based meat substitutes like Impossible Foods and Beyond Beef, which have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, cell-based, lab-grown meat products have yet to be approved for mass consumption by the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bay Area companies like Eat Just, Wildtype and Berkeley's Upside Foods are among a growing number of companies nationwide looking to make lab-grown meat go mainstream in an effort to counter the environmental impacts of traditional meat production. In December last year, the Singapore government approved the sale of Eat Just's lab-grown chicken, making it the first country in the world to approve such meat consumption on a commercial scale...
Wildtype hasn't been able to mass-produce quite yet. The Dogpatch production facility is hoping to produce 50,000 pounds per year in the near future, with plans to expand to 200,000 pounds per year in a larger space down the road, Kolbeck said.
From the cell stage to harvesting, it can take between three weeks to three months, said Elfenbein. Conventional fish farming can often take upwards of a year before the fish can be harvested...
The company is still working to get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to open its sushi bar to the public, though Kolbeck is hopeful that might happen by the end of this year. Unlike plant-based meat substitutes like Impossible Foods and Beyond Beef, which have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, cell-based, lab-grown meat products have yet to be approved for mass consumption by the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bay Area companies like Eat Just, Wildtype and Berkeley's Upside Foods are among a growing number of companies nationwide looking to make lab-grown meat go mainstream in an effort to counter the environmental impacts of traditional meat production. In December last year, the Singapore government approved the sale of Eat Just's lab-grown chicken, making it the first country in the world to approve such meat consumption on a commercial scale...
Wildtype hasn't been able to mass-produce quite yet. The Dogpatch production facility is hoping to produce 50,000 pounds per year in the near future, with plans to expand to 200,000 pounds per year in a larger space down the road, Kolbeck said.
needs a few decades (Score:2)
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Well technically you can lab grow without GM. It's about having processes in place for cell-based agriculture. On the other hand, there will be a lot that GM can do to streamline the production at scale.
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GM even after many decades of data is still not completely accepted by the public, I don't expect this to be accepted for at least a few decades.. I wonder how the hippies will feel abt this tech, kill natural animals or eat lab grown chemical meat?
There is no need to call lab-gown meat GM, whether or not it actually is genetically engineered. Just use the appropriate marketing term. Anti-science people can be made to believe anything you want them to.
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If they do modify the genetic structure to (total speculation here) make it easier/cheaper to grow in a lab, or to taste different, or whatever
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"Eating normal fish is essentially like eating a water filter after having cleansed some water of it's mercury, microplastic, etc. so fish definitely needs to be lab grown."
Just like salads, just produce a long endless green band where machines stamp out the leaves for the different types.
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Americans have less phobia about GM than Europeans.
A product like this doesn't have to appeal to everyone. Plant-based vegan meat has 4% of the meat market, yet several companies are thriving in that space.
Because it's not aboit GM! (Score:1)
It never was about GM itself. Please get that into your blind-ideology-thickened skull!
GM is fine! I'm vaccinated with an amazing genetically engineered vaccine.
It was always about not trusting profit-first psychopath-capitalists with even remotely caring for all the secondary and teritary effects resulting from their careless and incompetent use of GM.
Things like native variants of corn going extinct due to Monsanto's crap taking over. Things like horizontal gene transfer of unnatural proteins causing new
Inside SF (Score:1)
News of interest only to those on the SF peninsula and maybe Marin. No one else gives a damn about such nonsense.
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...And people who want meat to be affordable 30 years from now.
The world's population is growing and its apatite for meat is growing at an even faster rate https://ourworldindata.org/mea... [ourworldindata.org] . If Africa ever gets itself together economically it would have a dramatic effect on meat prices as well.
I mean, living on the West coast I've seen the price of King Salmon skyrocket from the increased demand from China over the years. It's now a more "luxury" or "treat" meal in my home when only a decade ago it was sti
Re: Inside SF (Score:1)
Well, stop the world population from growing then!
Whatever this does, like veganism, it's only gonna delay the overpopulation crisis. How's that a solution, except for people who can't think past their own nose?
You could start by not hating on Covid anymore, and passing out condoms to stupid people. :)
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How's that a solution, except for people who can't think past their own nose?
Couldnt disagree more! Being able to lab grow meat is a permanent increase in food production efficiency (assuming we can turn out a convincing product). Human history is packed full of major productivity increasing advancements for food production and without them we would only be able to feed a fraction of the people we currently do. This is just one of what will likely be many, many more advancements in how we produce food.
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At least until people cannot get wild salmon because it has been fished away. The trick is to save the salmon BEFORE we eat them all.
I dunno... (Score:3)
Seeing that the sushi chef is wearing a lab coat might be a bit off-putting.
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"Seeing that the sushi chef is wearing a lab coat might be a bit off-putting."
My sushi-chef is wearing one right now, should I be worried?
Looks, taste, texture. (Score:2)
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But if you're raised with something then that's what becomes 'normal', that's my point.
Intended to be more of a cautionary tale than anything else.
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the world and society changes over time. news at 11
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which they'll be so used to as 'normal' that when given real salmon (or chicken or beef or whatever) the taste and the texture and the aroma of it will be so rich and so varied that it will seem completely wrong to them.
Unlikely. We've already seen how it plays out with ice cream flavors. Artificial ones are so strong that people trying the real ones just find them bland.
But even then, what's wrong with people not liking "natural" flavors? People are still happy and fish stocks don't get depleted.
Re: Looks, taste, texture. (Score:1)
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Still, the meat is grown in 'chemicals'
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efficiency (Score:2)
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Farming salmon has a lot of environmental problems. Sustainable fishing is preferable. And if you grow fish in a petri dish then you can eliminate mercury contamination on our food supply.
All that said, it's still pretty weird. I draw the line at twinkies when it comes to processed food.
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"All that said, it's still pretty weird. I draw the line at twinkies when it comes to processed food."
Which side of the twinkies is your line?
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Hmm, lab grown twinkies, now there's a concept whose time has come. We could grow healthy ones.
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Is this in some way more efficient than farming salmon? If not, is the purpose here to get rid of the "suffering" of the animals in pens?
I was wondering this too. Salmon is easily farmed, and though early salmon farming in developing countries was mismanaged, today's farms in places like ultra-green New Zealand produce salmon that is identical to wild caught.
Environmentally, hunting of any species is sustainable only for small human populations. Farming is always more sustainable than hunting. If we still hunted our beef and pork, we would have exactly the same problem with supply as with today's fish depletion.
I guess we never learn (Score:1)
I already see it (Score:2)
They were afraid of the grey goo taking over but in reality it will have a more pinkish hue.
What will make or break this (Score:2)
It basically comes down to 2 questions:
1. How does it taste?`
2. How much does it cost?
If 1. is on par with real salmon and 2. is at least on par or cheaper, people will go for it. Else, it's gonna be a feelgood game for rich people.
Folks, please realize that the majority of people out there simply can't afford anymore to do "what is right". They have to do what makes them get by. If you want people to do what is right, pay them enough so they can.
Re: What will make or break this (Score:1)
I think
0. Will you slowly get sick from eating it, loke with every industrially manufixtured "food" before?
Is more important. Especially because people never notice until decades later when almost the entire populatiom got cardiovascular diseases (Thanks, sugar and starch and white flour industry!). And the corporations will again walk over millions of dead bodies, to lobby and PR everyone to keep it going for decades after the first scientists noticed. (That sigar was the main problem, was known and studie
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You literally just showed yourself why this is not going to matter to the question whether the product will succeed or not.
Lab? (Score:2)
Is lab really the appropriate word? Makes it sound scarier than killing and eating a salmon, which is far more brutal and also evil. Synthetic is usually better than natural. Killing and eating something is evil when unnecessary. Eventually we need to make our entire food supply 100% synthetic, not even plants -- because it will be healthier.
I suppose it's a start (Score:2)
Nature already knows how to make a salmon (Score:2)
We already have salmon that are nutritious and delicious, and evolution has probably brought us the most efficient way of doing that. So there's a pretty low chance that we can lab-grow the same thing without it costing more. To make it cost less, they'll have to take shortcuts to make it different.
Consider margarine... made with trans-fats, it tasted and felt kind of like butter and was significantly cheaper. Turns out it was also killing the people who ate it.
I trust a fisherman/woman to harvest and se
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evolution has probably brought us the most efficient way of doing that.
No lol. Salmon did not evolve to be the most efficient way to provide nutrients.
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I am pretty sure no species "evolved" to be more nutritious to its predators. The passenger pigeon went extinct because it tasted good. If anything we know some species evolved to do the opposite. Ask a blowfish, certain frog species, poison ivy, or a hemlock plant.
other meats (Score:2)
Re: Why is everyone just going along with this ins (Score:1)
Because they are not people!
You have to accept that they are not people!
They are passive automatons! Of like tentacles or limbs of a swarm entity, like a corporation or political swarm ideology or leader!
Their interests are meaningless to them themselves. They are literal zombies. They follow the interests for whoevery these things are beneficial!
Golems of the swarm brain. The "smart bug".
THAT one you have to find!
That one you have to stop.
Just beware that you are not falling into the fallacy of revenge. Le
Tuna (Score:3)
Did they go into details why not Tuna?
You can't really farm tuna and it's more expensive. Seems like it would fetch a higher return.
Most definitely not salmon. (Score:1)
Calling it that would be fraud, and probably battery too.
You can call it "mushy artificial salmonoid-like blob product (unflavored)" if you want to avoid prosecution [youtube.com].
They can't do that! (Score:1)
Because unless the person who owns the whole shebang is Japanese, that's "cultural appropriation"!
Right? Isn't that how the "good" group-think works these days?