Forget your hook, line and sinker. An Israeli food-tech company says it has 3D-printed the first ever ready-to-cook fish fillet using animal cells cultivated and grown in a laboratory.

Lab-grown beef and chicken have drawn attention as a way to sidestep the environmental toll of farming and tackle concerns over animal welfare, but few companies have forayed into seafood.

Israel’s Steakholder Foods has now partnered with Singapore-based Umami Meats to make fish fillets without the need to stalk dwindling fish populations.

Umami Meats extracts cells — for now from grouper — and grows them into muscle and fat.

Steakholder Foods then adds them to a “bio-ink” suited for special 3D printers. The outcome: a narrow fillet that mimics the properties of sea-caught fish.

Umami hopes to bring its first products to market next year, starting in Singapore and then, pending regulation, countries like the United States and Japan.

Cell cultivation alone is still too expensive to match the cost of traditional seafood, so for now the fish cells are diluted with plant-based ingredients in the bio-ink.

“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, the chief executive of Steakholder Foods.

A glass dish slides back and forth in the 3D printer, the white finger-length fillet building mass with each pass. It has the flakiness of traditional fish and when fried and seasoned it is hard to tell the difference.

The process is simpler than with beef, but there are some disadvantages.

Cow stem cells have been studied extensively but much less is known about fish, said Umami’s chief executive, Mihir Pershad.

“We have to figure out what the cells like to eat, how they like to grow, and there’s just not so much literature to start from,” he said.

“The number of scientists, you can imagine, working on fish stem cell biology is a small fraction of those working on animal cells and human cells.”

They have figured out a process for grouper and eel and hope to add three other endangered species in the coming months, he said.

Meeting the price of fish from the sea is a key challenge.

“We want consumers to choose based on how it tastes and what it can do for the world and the planetary environment. And we want to take cost off the table as consideration,” Pershad added.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【避免】bìmiǎn sidestep to step to the side in order to avoid something, especially being hit

【威胁】wēixié stalk move silently or threateningly

忘记你的鱼钩，线和铅锤吧。一家以色列食品技术公司表示，它已经用实验室培养的动物细胞3D打印出了第一块即食鱼片。

实验室培育的牛肉和鸡肉已经广为人知了，因为它们可以避免养殖业对环境的破坏，并解决对动物福祉的担忧，但很少有公司涉足海鲜。

以色列的Steakholder食品公司现在已经与新加坡的Umami Meats公司合作制造鱼片。他们采用的方法不会对鱼类种群数量造成威胁。

Umami Meats公司目前从石斑鱼中提取细胞，并将其培养成肌肉和脂肪。Steakholder食品公司然后将它们添加到适合特殊3D打印机的 “生物墨水”中。其结果是：一种模仿海鱼特性的鱼片。

Umami公司希望明年将其第一批产品推向市场，首先在新加坡试水。然后通过相关监管后，在美国和日本等国家推广。

因为单是细胞培养就十分昂贵，所以3D打印鱼片的成本无法与传统海产品相提并论。Steakholder Foods的首席执行官Arik Kaufman说：“随着时间的推移，生产这些产品的水平将更高，但相关成本会下降。”

一个玻璃盘子在3D打印机中来回滑动, 每过一次, 白色手指长的鱼片慢慢成型。鱼肉具有传统鱼的片状结构，在油炸和调味时很难分辨出其区别。这个过程比制作牛肉更简单，但也有一些缺点。Umami的首席执行官Mihir Pershad说，牛的干细胞已经得到了广泛的研究，但人们对鱼的干细胞了解却少得多。

他说：“我们必须弄清楚细胞吸收营养和生长的方式，但没有那么多的文献可以参考。毕竟从事鱼类干细胞研究的科学家的数量，只是从事动物和人类细胞研究的科学家的一小部分。”他们已经研究清楚石斑鱼和鳗鱼的细胞，并希望在未来几个月了解其他三种濒危物种。

把价格降到和捕捞的海鱼相当是关键的挑战。“我们希望消费者会根据鱼肉的味道及环保的角度来选择。我们希望消除价格对他们选择的影响。”佩尔沙德说。(SD-Agencies)