Spamsilog, a Filipino cuisine made with "OmniPork New Meal Meat" brand plant-based meat. Image source: The New York Times website
Shanghai spring rolls processed from the plant-based meat brand "OmniPork New Meal Meat" at Reina Restaurant in California, USA. Image source: The New York Times website
The New York Times pointed out in a recent report that plant protein meat is gradually being accepted and respected by consumers. And as sophisticated fish alternatives begin to attract investment and gradually enter restaurants in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, those who continue to focus on fish-free seafood products say the industry may be on the verge of an outbreak, with plant- or lab-grown fish or seafood expected to be the next frontier in the food sector.
Artificial fish meat is in the ascendant
Consumers in some countries are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental issues of the seafood industry, including overfishing and the health risks posed by some seafood. In addition, some startups are now doing a better job of mimicking the taste and texture of fish (an important consideration for non-vegetarians), prompting artificial fish to appear more and more on the table.
Joshua Katz, an alternative protein industry analyst at McKinsey & Company, said the foods are no longer the alternative fish bars of the past, and that plant-based seafood products have great market potential.
"It's just a smarter way to make seafood," said Mitre Gosk, head of The Institute for Quality Food in Singapore, Asia Pacific.
Although U.S. plant-based seafood accounts for only 0.1 percent of the country's seafood sales, lower than plant-based meat substitutes account for the U.S. meat market (1.4 percent), global seafood alternatives received $83 million in 2020, far more than the $1 million investment they made three years ago, according to the Institute for Quality Food Research. Moreover, as of June this year, there were 83 companies producing seafood substitutes worldwide, nearly three times that of 2017.
Of the 83 companies, 65 focus on producing and manufacturing plant-based products; 6 specialize in producing proteins through fermentation, including a French start-up that produces smoked salmon from microalgae, and more than a dozen others are developing laboratory seafood.
Plant-based fish products are fledgling
The American company "Impossible Food" is a leader in the alternative protein industry and has been working on the development of fish-free "fish meat" for many years. However, Jessica Appel, a spokeswoman for the company, said the company had not yet produced alternative aquatic products.
But some big companies have already done it. For example, California seafood giant Wasp Foods said last year that it was partnering with Pennsylvania's plant-based seafood company Harvest, which sells products such as artificial fish fillets and crab cakes at Whole Foods and other retailers.
In addition, there are startups that are developing alternative fish proteins that mimic raw fish, including a company called Cugliana that restricts the sale of a plant-based sushi-grade tuna in Los Angeles and the United States through the Poke Bar chain. The company's chief executive, Yatzek Pruss, said that while crumb-coated faux fillets have sold well so far, if the industry wants to attract non-vegetarians, it needs to further improve products that mimic raw fish. "The biggest challenge we face is how to better reconstruct the texture and texture of seafood," he says. ”
According to the Institute of Quality Food, 47 of the 65 companies that currently produce plant-based seafood are outside the United States. Industry insiders say market share in the Asia-Pacific region will grow significantly, as fish consumed in the Asia-Pacific region accounts for more than two-thirds of the world's fish consumption, according to United Nations estimates.
Thailand's United Foods Company, one of the world's largest traditional canned tuna processing companies, said in March that it invented OMG meat for "half-meat, half-vegetarians" looking to reduce their carbon footprint. In addition, startup "Novelty" has been selling algae-based fermentation alternative fish products in China since last year.
Laboratory cultivation is obstructive and long
The next area is lab-grown seafood, edible products grown from real cells in the lab, but the technology is still a long way from retail and widespread commercialization.
Industry insiders explained that from a technical point of view, plant protein meat is mainly isolated from soybeans and other legumes, plus a variety of seasonings, calling out the taste like meat, without too much input to complete production. However, the meat grown by cell culture is cultured with animal cells, which involves the theory of tissue engineering in the field of biological high technology, and there are still many technical barriers. From the current perspective of the entire industry, the commercialization of cell-cultured meat is a longer process, and the cost is higher than that of plant protein meat.
Freya Mechta, a German scientist specializing in cell agriculture research, said that another major challenge facing the development of laboratory-grown seafood is that scientists usually do not know as much about marine species as they do about mammals, and in many countries, the government has not yet issued corresponding testing and regulatory policies; compared with plant protein meat, the cell culture meat related industrial chain is not perfect and mature enough.
Later this year, Gosker said, more startups that grow proteins in the lab could get U.S. regulatory approval. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in October that products containing cultured seafood cells "may soon enter the U.S. market."
In California, two farmed fish companies, San Diego-based Balealu and San Francisco-based Wildtype, have announced that they will begin commercializing lab-grown seafood products in the near future; Singaporean meat and seafood company Shiok Meats has also said it plans to start commercializing such products next year. (Reporter Liu Xia)
Source: Science and Technology Daily