A worker removes a piece of cultivated grouper fish from a 3D printer at Steakholder Foods in Rehovot, Israel, in this photo taken on April 23, 2023.| A worker removes a piece of cultivated grouper fish from a 3D printer at Steakholder Foods in Rehovot, Israel, in this photo taken on April 23, 2023. (REUTERS)
REHOVOT, Israel — Forget your hook, line, and sinker. An Israeli food tech company claims it has created the world’s first ready-to-cook, 3D-printed fish fillet. The product was made using animal cell cultures and growths in a lab.
Few companies have ventured in to the seafood industry. Although lab-grown beef, chicken, and pork have attracted attention for their ability to reduce environmental impacts and alleviate concerns about animal welfare.
Israel’s Steakholder Foods has now partnered with Singapore-based Umami Meats to make fish fillets without the need to stalk dwindling fish populations.
Umami Meats extracts cells—for now from grouper—and grows them into muscle and fat. Steakholder Foods then adds them to a “bio-ink” suited for special 3D printers. The result: a narrow filet that mimics properties of sea-caught salmon.
Target markets
Umami plans to introduce its first products on the market in Singapore, and, subject to regulatory approval, then to countries like Japan and America.
The cost of cell cultivation is too high to compete with the price of seafood. For now, the bio-ink contains plant-based ingredients instead.
“As time goes by, the complexity and level of these products will be higher, and the prices linked to producing them will decrease,” said Arik Kaufman, the chief executive of Steakholder Foods.
Each time the 3D printer passes over the glass dish, the white fillet of finger length grows. The fish has the flakiness and texture of traditional fish. It is difficult to tell when it’s fried with seasoning.
There are a few disadvantages to the process.
There are still many unknowns
Cow stem cells have been studied extensively but much less is known about fish, said Umami’s chief executive, Mihir Pershad.
“We have to figure out what the cells like to eat, how they like to grow, and there’s just not so much literature to start from,” he said. “The number of scientists, you can imagine, working on fish stem cell biology is a small fraction of those working on animal cells and human cells.”
He said they have developed a method for catching grouper and eel, and that they hope to add at least three more endangered species within the next few months.
Price of fish at sea is the key challenge.
“We want consumers to choose based on how it tastes and what it can do for the world and the planetary environment. And we want to take cost off the table as consideration,” Pershad added.
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