Lab-grown Salmon is Now FDA Approved — Here’s Why This One Restaurant is Putting It on the Menu
By Caroline Cubbin
Land ho! You’ve heard of fresh-caught salmon and even farm-raised — but what about lab-grown?
San Francisco cellular agriculture company Wildtype is the latest company to get FDA approval for its lab-grown salmon
Only three other companies have gotten the stamp of approval to sell cultivated salmon so far.
The company made waves in the food and culinary sectors after announcing that its hero product, saku salmon, got approved in “a thorough pre-market safety consultation.”
Curious people can find the fish on the menu at Portland, Oregon, restaurant Kann — a James Beard award-winning Haitian spot by chef Gregory Gourdet.
For June, the cultured salmon will only grace the menu every Thursday night, but in July, it is slated to be a nightly offering.
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“Our saku is sushi-grade and best served raw in dishes like sushi, crudo, and ceviche,” Wildtype explains on its website.
“We made it for world-class chefs who seek out the distinct flavor and freshness of raw seafood.”
And according to the FDA, they view lab-grown salmon “as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods,” the FDA wrote in its public response letter.
The FDA’s only gripe with Wildtype’s cultivated salmon so far is that the company refers to it as ‘cultured salmon cell material’ — which is not “our recommendation of that term as an appropriate common or usual name for declaring the substance in accordance with FDA’s labeling requirements,” the agency said.
This interest in lab-grown salmon is due to both wild-caught and farm-raised versions containing levels of mercury. Wild-caught salmon is also susceptible to picking up chemicals in local waters.
So, how exactly is lab-grown salmon made?
The process can be broken down into three steps: source, grow and harvest. Living cells from Pacific salmon are taken from fish and then placed into cell cultivators that mimic the temperature, pH, and nutrients of a wild fish — allowing the cells to grow, as explained by Wildtype.
Once fully matured and harvested, the living “salmon cells” are fused with plant-based ingredients that imitate the texture and appearance of true salmon.
Experts warn that typically, both wild-caught and farm-raised salmon contain traceable levels of mercury and are susceptible to picking up chemicals in local waters.
By producing synthetic seafood, Wildtype says it aims to “sustainably meet the food security challenges of this century” and minimize the damaging environmental implications of farming and fishing practices, while reducing “exposure to common contaminants we’d rather avoid.”
According to the Washington State Department of Health, farmed salmon can sometimes be exposed to organic contaminants and pests like sea lice more often than wild-caught salmon, but rest assured: “most of the salmon available for us to eat is farmed,” the agency says.
Synthetic salmon hasn’t hit the grocery store shelves just yet but given cultural interest in plant-based, meatless, and lab-grown products — that day seems to be just around the corner.
