Bioreactor Salmon

In the new field of cellular agriculture, one company has developed lab-grown salmon that tastes and looks just like the ocean-caught variety. It even has a similar nutritional profile.

Unlike plant-based meat substitutes, the process starts with actual fish cells, which are placed in stainless steel tanks and “fed” with the same proteins, fats, carbohydrates and minerals that salmon would consume in the wild. Although the cells’ DNA is programmed to mature like naturally grown fish, a plant-based scaffold provides a structure to help them organize in a way that more closely resembles a fish.

With many types of salmon now becoming endangered or at risk, alternative production methods are needed to meet the demands of a growing population in a sustainable way. Wild-catch fishing is destroying biodiversity, and fish farming poses problems with water pollution. But seafood is still the most widely consumed protein on the planet and the current pilot plant is only the beginning of what will need to eventually operate at a much larger scale.