Although various early-stage biotech companies have tried
it, could we someday make caviar from stem cells?
By: Ringo Bones
During the last two years, various early-stage biotechnology
companies have spent a significant portion of their research and development
budget on ways to produce fish, meat, fruit and vegetable products from stem
cells. Despite of the current difficulty of perfecting such a process – let alone
making it currently economically viable – it has one glaring advantage over
current conventional ways that we catch and / or grow our most popular foods –
it has a much lower carbon footprint than out current methods of fishing and
farming them.
One of these early stage biotechnology companies is Finless
Foods. Were founder and CEO Mike Selden’s mission is to develop and mass
produce pioneering marine animal food products for human consumption. The
company’s objective is to create seafood sustainably using scientific cellular
agriculture technologies – i.e. growing fish from stem cells, which will
produce a cost-effective and healthier appetizing alternative to conventionally
caught and commercially farmed seafood.
Imagine if they one day successfully be able to grow Caspian
Sea sturgeon caviar in the lab from stem cells. Not only will this prevent the
now endangered Caspian Sea sturgeon from going extinct, but also means that
since no fishing boats went to the open waters to catch the sturgeon, the
carbon footprint of lab-grown caviar is drastically much lower than those harvested
from the wild.
