Photo courtesy of Nature

Fish without catch: 'Farmed fish will probably reach the market sooner than cultured meat'

BELGIUM
Thursday, February 23, 2023, 07:00 (GMT + 9)

The Flemish start-up Fishway wants to make fish products that no longer need to be caught. Moreover, the farmed fish will be extra healthy.

Source: Fishway

Scientists have long warned that if fishing continues at its current rate and volume, there will be no commercially exploitable fish populations left in the foreseeable future. They will all be destroyed. And the alternative, commercial fish farming, is not always a solution. There are many harmful side effects, such as water pollution, overuse of antibiotics and the destruction of mangrove swamps.

Image: VILT / FIS -->

Commitment to a sustainable approach to both catching and farming is commendable, but not always easy to implement and monitor. In addition, more and more people are eating more fish as an alternative to meat, which increases the pressure. There is a diligent search for technological innovations to turn the tide. Fish consumption must be decoupled from its effects on ecosystems.

The Flemish start-up Fishway fits into that picture. He is the brainchild of economist Sam Van de Velde, experienced in business, and bio-engineer Nina Coolsaet, who built her career around the development of fish feed in farms. The two have been friends for a long time and last year decided to put their shoulders together on a project for 'farmed fish': fish products based on the culture of stem cells, without the intermediate step of 'real' fish being necessary.

Naturally, our products will not contain any chemical contaminants, such as the meat of many real fish.

Save on energy

It is the fish variant of cultured meat, which has been around for some time. Hamburgers and sausages, and maybe even steaks, will be made without the use of cows and pigs, except as suppliers of stem cells. The cells are further cultivated in bioreactors and later controlled in such a way that they form marketable meat products.

Source: Fishway

For the time being, the sector is somewhat stuck in the search for an economically viable breeding ground for cell culture. Initially, serum from cow fetuses was used for this, but that is unethical, too expensive and too difficult to scale up to industrial quantities. There is a feverish search for plant-based alternatives. Nina Coolsaet is contributing to this – for the past three years she has been an advisor at the Dutch company Mosa Meat, the most important developer of cultured meat in Europe.

Coolsaet is convinced that growing fish fillets will be faster than growing meat, because fish cells have properties that make them easier to handle. In this way they keep on dividing endlessly, while meat cells lose their dividing capacity over time and have to be replaced. Because fish are cold-blooded, their cells can also withstand a wider range of temperatures than those of warm-blooded cows and pigs.

'We hope to be able to grow our fish cells at room temperature,' says Coolsaet. “Then we would save enormously on energy costs. Fish cells also have more flexibility in terms of environmental factors such as acidity and oxygen content, so the culture medium for their culture will be less restrictive than with meat. Moreover, fish meat with its lamellae has a structure that is easier to imitate than cow meat. So I expect that cultured fish will be on the market sooner than cultured meat. Our products will also be used in animal feed.”

It is also the intention to make farmed fish 'healthier' for the consumer. That is why Fishway is initially focusing on the cultivation of freshwater fish, such as perch and eel. "Freshwater fish have a better conversion of low-quality to high-quality omega-3 fatty acids than marine fish," Coolsaet explains. ‘We can have low-quality omega-3 fatty acids from soybean or rapeseed oil in the culture media of our cultures converted into high-quality fatty acids, which are very healthy. Our products will of course not contain any chemical contaminants, as in many real fish.'

Cell culture of oysters

Fishway is not the first company to focus on this innovation. In Europe, there is only the German start-up Bluu Seafood, which focuses on salmon and trout, but there are more initiatives in Asia and North America. "There are so many opportunities to breed various fish species, even shrimp and oysters, that there will not necessarily be much competition," says Sam Van de Velde. “The German start-up raised 7 million euros in investments in less than a year, which is an exceptional amount. Investors are eager to get involved in sustainable farmed fish projects. We hope to collect such an amount by the end of the year.”

For the time being, Fishway's offices are located in a laboratory in the Leuven Bio-Incubator, which was taken over from the previous owner. The intention is to start building a pilot plant in 2025, with bioreactors in which production can be scaled up from a few liters to 400 litres. Industrial quantities of 5,000 liters must be achieved by 2027 – in the expectation that large-scale production will not hinder cell culture processes. Van de Velde and Coolsaet hope to market their products by 2030, "for a price that is not significantly different from that of real fish.'

To streamline the approval process of this "new food" by the competent authorities, they will join the lobby group Cellular Agriculture Europe, which unites European cultured meat producers - Germany's Bluu Seafood is already part of it. “People sometimes worry when they hear that other companies are working on similar projects, but for something as new as farmed fish that is more of an advantage than a disadvantage,” says Van de Velde. “In any case, it will be a challenge to convince the consumer that our product is not only healthy and environmentally friendly, but also safe. In fact, our seafood products will be made in a manner similar to beer or yogurt production. That will be an important aspect of our marketing.”

By Dirk Draulans / Knack (translated from original in Flemish)

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www.seafood.media

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