In recent years, the intensive salmon farms have grown to respond to the high demand globally, but have brought serious environmental and health problems with them: marine pollution, diffusion of diseases and a great negative impact on aquatic ecosystems. What if there was an alternative? The FDA has just approved the first Salmon cultivated in the laboratory in the USA.
The Californian company Wildype has just received the green light for the production of its Saku, a salmon fillet grown in the laboratory, of quality suitable for sushi and designed to be served raw in dishes such as ceviche and sashimi. It is the fourth company in the world to obtain authorization for a salmon of this type, after a careful assessment of the risks for human health.
Wildtype’s cultivated salmon will be served initially only on Thursday evening at Kann, the Haitian restaurant of Chef Gregory Gourdet in Portland (Oregon), winner of the James Beard Award. But from July it will be available every evening, a sign of a growing interest in the culinary world for these sustainable innovations.
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How to cultivate salmon
The process is highly technological: It starts from live cells of Pacific salmon, which are grown in bioreators who replicate natural conditions – temperature, pH and nutrients – to allow cells to grow. Once ripe, the cells are collected and combined with vegetable ingredients to reproduce the consistency, color and taste of traditional salmon.
The result is a product that, according to the FDA, is “as sure as comparable foods produced with other methods“And that avoids many of the risks associated with conventional fish.
Wildtype said he wanted “face the challenges of food safety in a sustainable way of this century“, Offering a clean protein, without antibiotics, parasites or environmental contaminants. It is a concrete response to the environmental crisis that affects our oceans, from the destruction of habitats to the acidification of the water, up to the superpeca that threatens whole ecosystems.
The cultivated salmon has not yet arrived in supermarkets, but with the increase in environmental pressure and the growing interest for ethical and safe alternatives to traditional fish, that moment seems closer and closer.
And while some criticisms remain – from the production cost still elevated to the issue of the legal denomination – the entrance of the salmon cultivated in the menus of high -end restaurants could mark the beginning of a new era for the consumption of fish.
