Steakholder Foods 3D Bio-Prints First Ready-to-Cook Cultivated Grouper Fish
Steakholder Foods an international deep-tech food company at the forefront of the cultivated meat industry, announced that it has successfully printed the first ready-to-cook cultivated grouper fish product.
The production milestone is part of a strategic partnership between two companies, Steakholder Foods, who customised its bio-inks utilising grouper cells provided by its project partner, Singapore-based cultivated seafood start-up Umami Meats.
To mark the move, Steakholder Foods hosted Mihir Pershad (CEO of Umami Meats), Arik Kaufman (CEO of Steakholder Foods), Megumi Avigail Yoshitomi (Japan Association for Cellular Agriculture), and Adele Li (Chargée d' Affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Singapore in Israel) at a tasting event in Singapore.
The tasting included a "grouper fish chef's table", with piscine delicacies prepared by the company's chef, Moran Lidor, including Singaporean-style and Israeli-style signature fish dishes.
The printing and bio-ink customisation are steps on the path to commercialising Steakholder Foods' 3D printer, proving its bioprinting and bioink technologies to be a sophisticated production platform for structured hybrid and cultivated products, that can facilitate various species and therefore various companies and industry players.
The collaboration with Umami Meats, which is backed by a grant from the Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation, aims to develop a scalable process for producing structured cultivated fish products using Steakholder Foods' proprietary 3D bio-printing technology and customized bio-inks.
Since receiving grouper fish cells from Umami, the Steakholder Foods team has been creating customised bio-inks and optimising the taste and texture of its printed grouper, towards finalizing a prototype. The 3D fish printing also represents a successful and meaningful milestone in the partnership between Umami Meats and Steakholder Foods.
Unlike fully cultivated meat products which still require incubation and maturation after printing, the grouper fish product is ready to cook after printing, thanks to Steakholder Foods' unique technology that allows the mimicking of the flaky texture of cooked fish – a technology that is the subject of a provisional patent application.
Mihir Pershad, CEO of Umami Meats said: "We are delighted to have produced the world's first whole fillet cultivated fish in partnership with Steakholder Foods. In this first tasting, we showcased a cultivated product that flakes, tastes, and melts in your mouth exactly like excellent fish should. In the coming months, we intend to announce our plans for bringing this world-class cultivated fish to the market."
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