Israeli food-tech company Steakholder Foods says it has developed a 3D-printed fish fillet.
While several companies have pushed for lab-grown beef and chicken alternatives, few have focused on seafood, according to Reuters.
Steakholder Foods has partnered with Singapore-based Umami Meats to make fish fillets using cells cultivated and grown in a lab, per Reuters.
“We’re excited to be working with Umami Meats to develop 3D-printed structured fish products that have the same great taste and texture as traditionally caught fish, without harming the environment,” Steakholder Foods CEO Arik Kaufman told Interesting Engineering.
For now, Umami Meats extracts cells from grouper and grows them into muscle and fat. Steakholder Foods then adds them to special 3D printers to create a fillet that mimics the properties of sea-caught fish, per Reuters.
“In this first tasting, we showcased a cultivated product that flakes, tastes and melts in your mouth exactly like excellent fish should,” Mihir Pershad, CEO of Umami Meats, said, per Interesting Engineering.
Since the process is still expensive, fish cells are currently diluted with plant-based ingredients. However, Kaufman predicts that the process will continue to improve.
“As time goes by, the complexity and level of these products will be higher, and the prices linked to producing them will decrease,” Kaufman said, per Reuters.
The fish fillet takes just a few minutes to print and is ready to cook immediately, according to The Telegraph. In contrast, previous iterations of 3D-printed food have taken much longer to manufacture, such as these plant-based “beef” cuts that had to be incubated for weeks and allowed to mature.
While fish has a simpler makeup than beef, it is far less studied.
“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,” Pershad said, according to Reuters.
Pershad said they have figured out the process for grouper and eel and are looking to add three other endangered species shortly.
Umami hopes to sell its 3D-printed fish fillets next year in Singapore, followed by the United States and Japan, pending regulatory approval, Reuters reported.
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