An Israeli company has developed a technology in which you can print fish in 3D instead of fishing.
The company, Steakholder Foods, said it printed the first ever ready-to-cook fish fillet using animal cells grown in a laboratory.
VOA News reported that the technology is drawing attention as a way to get around environmental issues caused by farming, and a few companies are exploring lab-grown seafood.
Steakholder Foods is working with Singapore-based Umami Meats to print fish fillets by taking cells from a kind of fish called grouper and growing them into muscle and fat.
It is then added to a ‘bio-ink’ that works with special 3D printers, which results in a narrow fillet that copies the properties of sea-caught fish.
VOA, in its Science and Technology section, further wrote that the lab-grown fish is developed in a process known as cell cultivation.
“Cell cultivation alone is still too costly to match the cost of traditional seafood. So, for now, the fish cells are mixed with plant-based substances in the bio-ink,” a paragraph in the article read.
It is hard to tell the difference from normal fish because it breaks apart easily. The fish fillet is produced through a process in which a glass dish moves in the 3D printer, the white fillet building mass with each pass.
“As time goes by, the complexity and level of these products will be higher, and the prices linked to producing them will decrease,” said Arik Kaufman of Steakholder Foods.
The product is expected to be unveiled on the market next year, starting with Singapore, the United States, and Japan.
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