Dutch Fake Meat Company Is Working To Develop ‘Next Level’ Fake Salmon Fat To Revolutionize Industry

The following report is by Food Navigator:

In working to improve the taste of plant-based seafood alternatives, Dutch start-up
Upstream Foods is cultivating fat from salmon cells for the B2B market.

A quick stroll down the plant-based supermarket aisle reveals a full range of meat-free burgers, sausages, and even bacon rashers. Alternative seafood options, on the other hand, are few and far between.

But the tide on plant-based seafood is turning. According to the Good Food Institute (GFI), last year the US market observed both dollar and unit sales (up 53%) growth for plant-based seafood, and stakeholders expend this trend to continue.

To truly hit the mainstream, however, plant-based seafood has to lift its game, suggests Kianti Figler, founder and CEO of Dutch start-up Upstream Foods. “It’s fair to say that the quality of products is not there, not yet,” she told delegates at F&A Next, an event hosted by Rabobank, Wageningen University & Research, Anterra Capital and StartLife, last week in the Netherlands.

The main reasons consumers would choose plant-based seafood is flavor (78%), according to TURF (total unduplicated reach and frequency) analyses, followed by its potential to reduce overfishing (7%), being rich in Omega 3 (3%), not containing any bones (1%) and its impact on plastic waste reduction (1%).

GFI believes that once consumers have a positive impression of alternative seafood flavor, messaging focused on these other benefits are likely to make products more appealing to consumers. Figler agrees: “We should be focusing on taste, and improving that to drive innovation.”

Improving Taste With Fat

The start-up’s solution is founded in cellular agriculture: Upstream Foods is developing
cultivated fish fat for the plant-based seafood market. In essence, the company takes cells from salmon, turns it into a proprietary cell line, cultivates the cells in a bioreactor, and then in partnership with an industry player, combines the fat with a plant-based matrix.

We can create a synergy between these two ingredients and create quality products
that taste like seafood, have all of the health benefits, but are also affordable for
consumers.

The company is currently optimising its salmon cell line and establishing its process at lab-scale. Looking to the future, Upstream Foods predicts the main challenge in increasing scale will be reducing cost of production.

For everybody in the industry, [this] is the hardest thing to do. Everything has been designed for the pharma industry, and traditionally there have not been a lot of incentives to drive the cost [of ingredients] down.

Making this entire process cost efficient is, I think, the biggest challenge we’re all facing.

Figler told delegates.

Upstream Foods has already developed a proof of concept with ‘global plant-based seafood players’.

After its next round of fundraising (Upstream Foods is looking to raise €3m in seed funding), the start-up plans to scale its process first to 30L, and then onto 100L scale. Once that milestone is achieved, Upstream Foods will further increase its scale, and file for regulatory approval in the US. The company aspires to be on the market four years from now.

“I would love to go to market in the EU first, and I think consumers here are ready for it,” said Figler. However, the CEO is concerned that submitting a Novel Foods application to the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) might be too time consuming.

No cell-based meat or fat company has filed a Novel Foods submission to EFSA, and once they do, it is predicted to take a minimum of nine months, and even up to 18 months or longer to get approval​.

Right now, we’re still struggling to host [cell-based fat] tastings, so I don’t see going through EFSA as a very viable path for a start-up. It’s just going to take a bit too long. So [the EU] is not going to be our first market, unfortunately…

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

Plant-based and cell-cultured meats are insanely unhealthy for you as is, but now this new abominable lab experiment is set to make people even sicker. The industry is totally failing in the U.S., with more and more businesses dropping fridge and shelf space for it, having lost more money than they’d care to admit to. It’s doing okay in Europe from what I have read, but it is still very much rejected and laughed at in the U.S. Just eat the real thing for crying out loud.

SEE: The Health Effects Of Plant-Based And Artificial “Meats”

[1] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; [2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; [3] Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

1 Timothy 4:1-3

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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