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[28 de Hong Kong, Reuters]- Chef Eddie Rune stood in front of the world’s first “lab-grown” fish fillet in his kitchen in southwest Hong Kong. Bake a few pieces in a pan and fry the rest in oil. The final menu was a fish burger battered, fried and tartar sauce.
“Before cooking, the meat was quite stiff, but when it was heated, the texture changed to look like a real fish,” Rune said. The cooking experiment took place at the end of last year in the lively Wong Chuk Hang district.
According to Chef Rune, the taste and aroma of the fillet is the same as that of ordinary fish, but has the stickiness of a crab cake (crab paste).
The fish on Chef Rune’s countertop is made by Hong Kong-based food company Avant Meat. According to Elaine Shoe, CEO of the NPO Good Food Institute (GFI) Asia Pacific, it is important to meet the growing global demand for meat and seafood without jeopardizing climate change targets. It is said that it will be a step.
“Cultured meat allows us to provide the animal protein that consumers want without depleting marine resources or clearing rainforests,” he said.
In early December, just before the fish tasting, the Singaporean government announced that it had approved cell culture chicken earlier than other countries. Artificially farmed meat, also known as “clean meat”, will be sold to the general public for the first time in the world.
GFI said in a report published last year that economic growth and rising incomes are expected to boost traditional meat and seafood consumption in Asia by nearly 80% by 2050.
Artificially farmed meat is about to gain a foothold, but according to a 2011 study from Oxford University, artificially farmed meat consumes up to 45% of the energy in meat production and produces more than 78% of the gases greenhouse effect. It has the potential to reduce land needs by 99% and water consumption by up to 96%.
But other researchers say that the environmental benefits of artificially grown meat are overestimated, especially since the production is energy-intensive.
CEO Carrie Chan, co-founder of Avant Meat, says that artificially culturing fish meat takes a fraction of the time it takes to produce seafood using conventional methods.
Chief Executive Officer Chan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that most farmed fish take a year or two to grow, and wild fish take longer, depending on the species.
However, about 10 steaks prepared by Avant Meat for a tasting by Chef Rune took only about two months to produce.
At Avant Meat, cells harvested from Serranidae fish were placed in a bioreactor and cultured for glucose, minerals, amino acids, vitamins, and proteins. According to Avant Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Mario Chin, it’s similar to making beer or yogurt.
The cultured cells grow into muscle tissue. There are no heads, fins, or internal organs.
According to Chin, cell culture technology allows the cultivation of a variety of animal proteins almost anywhere.
According to JJ Chow, responsible for financing agricultural and food projects in the Asia-Pacific region at Mizuho Bank, these artificially grown animal proteins have stable prices to overcome the instability of the food supply. It is attractive for companies looking for a predictable supply and for companies that want to purchase food products in a location close to consumers.
There will also be benefits for governments. This is because the COVID-19 pandemic and trade disputes have revealed the need to secure and nationalize food production.
Avant CEO Chan said promoting artificial cultivation “would restrict the space required for food production to a place where the bioreactor would be installed.”
Marks Heiferi, who will retire as president of Legal Springs, the world’s largest tilapia producer with a focus on social responsibility, said traceability and quality stability are also big draws.
In a 2020 report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that a third of the world’s fish stocks are overfished.
Another study predicts that by 2050, the amount of plastic in the ocean will exceed that of shellfish, as the increase in microplastics, heavy metals and other pollutants increases the pollution of marine products.
Consideration of animal rights may also be a factor driving the switch to artificially farmed meat.
The idea of eating artificially grown meat has become more palatable to consumers in recent years, especially in Asia.
A 2019 survey published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems magazine found that consumers in China and India were more willing to consume artificially grown meat than consumers in the United States.
“Hong Kong street food is a bit exciting, because I don’t know what I’m using,” said Minnie Chun, a 30-year-old yoga teacher who sampled artificially grown fish in Chef Rune’s kitchen.
“If you don’t tell us it’s farmed, you’ll think it’s a high-end fish burger.”
<¿Existe alguna preocupación sobre la manipulación genética?>
However, many people are skeptical about eating artificially farmed fish. It is both because it is not natural and because it is a transgenic food.
However, according to Chow of Mizuho Bank, artificially farmed seafood has not been genetically modified. It is a point that highlights the importance of illustration and easy-to-understand labeling for people to accept artificially grown meat.
“The important thing is to make people aware of the ‘why’ part, not just the ‘how’, that is, the production method and the level of safety,” said Chow.
The “why” part includes an explanation of why alternative proteins are important and “what are the benefits for consumers, animal welfare and the planet,” Chow said.
Chow says the key to success for artificially grown meat and seafood is not just providing the right information to consumers, but also achieving reasonable prices.
Chow notes that artificially farmed seafood is not generally available to the public at this time, but will be supplied to niche markets where people are willing to pay more, rather than the mass market.
But according to a 2019 report by international consultancy AT Kearney, artificially grown meat has the potential to make a big difference to the trillion-dollar traditional meat industry.
The report predicts that over the next 20 years, artificially grown meat will account for 35% of global meat consumption.
Industry insiders like Heiferi of Regal Springs hope that changing what’s on the table will contribute to a fundamental change in the way people’s health is restored.
“Someday, we’ll look back and say, ‘At the time, I was still driving my car, burning fossil fuels, driving cars, and killing animals for protein.’“ Is it? ”He asked in a video interview.
“Can you imagine it?”
(Translation: Acrelen)
