The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved San-Francisco-based Wildtype to become the nation’s first company to sell lab-grown seafood. Wildtype cleared the pre-market safety assessment in late May, with the FDA saying that the startup’s cultivated fish is “as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods.”
The approval makes Wildtype the fourth cellular agriculture company to receive FDA clearance for commercial sales, along with UPSIDE Foods, GOOD Meat, and Mission Barns.
Investors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Bezos, and Robert Downey Jr. have backed Wildtype’s salmon, which is sourced from coho salmon and designed to have the same appearance, taste, and texture as regular salmon. Multinational food corporation Cargill is also a significant investor.
What is Cultivated Salmon?
This isn’t fake meat. Also known as lab-grown or cell-based, cultivated fish is real fish, grown in a laboratory from fish cells.
To create the cultivated salmon, a small sample of cells is taken from a live fish, much like a biopsy. These cells are then placed in tanks along with nutrients for growth, allowing the salmon cells to multiply and grow into muscle tissue, just as they would inside a fish.
Wildtype offers a specific type of cut, saku, a Japanese term for a block of seafood that can be eaten raw in sushi, poke, or sashimi.
Sounds disgusting, so no thanks! Plus, it is backed by a bunch of demented lefties!