Wildtype’s laboratory produced “sushi-grade salmon”/Wildtype
While Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and the 49th state fishing industry have been fretting the dreaded “Frankenfish” salmon, a modern twist on old Mendelian genetics, mad scientists have been working to end-run the whole farming business.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this month gave its stamp of approval to the plans of Berkley, Calif.-based Upside Foods to produce chicken “meat” from cultured chicken cells, and the company has plans for meat and seafood products as well.
The FDA appears all onboard with these ideas.
“We are already engaged in discussions with multiple firms about various types of food made from cultured animal cells, including food made from seafood cells that will be overseen solely by the FDA. Our goal is to support innovation in food technologies while always maintaining as our priority the production of safe food.”
BlueNau is focused on producing bluefin tuna in the laboratory, but it is far from the only player in the business of growing protein products from cells instead of naturally on the farm or in the wild.
Laboratory produced salmon
The companies involved in the development of manufactured meat and seafood products like to proclaim their high ideals for feeding the world, but like AquaBounty – the parent company for the Frankenfish – the reality at the end of the day is that it’s all, or at least largely all, about money. This is the way capitalist economies work.
This is a little more sophisticated than breeding a horse with a donkey to get a mule, but the idea is similar. And the Aqua Advantage Salmon, like the poor mule, is incapable of reproducing, which would prevent the AquaAdvantage salmon from breeding with wild fish were it somehow to escape the farm, which is unlikely given that AquaBounty has been legally restricted to farming its salmon on land to ensure the Frankenfish don’t run wild.
How the AquaBounty salmon would get from the the AquaBounty farms in Indiana, Ohio and Canadia’s Maritime Provinces to Alaska to devaste anything is unclear, but then Murkowski’s efforts to undermine the AquaBounty product isn’t about the environment anymore than was Alaska’s ban on fish traps or salmon farms.
The economy, stupid
The ban on fish traps was a populist revolt against what was perceived as Outside control of the fishing industry, an economic mainstay of the Alaska territory, and the ban on salmon farms was a fishing industry led effort to curtail market competition from farmed salmon.
Both failed. The Alaska fishing industry is still controlled largely by Outside interests, and the market has been taken over by farmed salmon from Norway, Chile and elsewhere. And now traditional seafood, both wild and farmed, appears about to face competition from seafood cultured in the industrial version of a test tube.
Crazy as this sounds, never bet against tech.
Twenty-five years ago, the internet was AOL.com. The laptop computer was heavy and clunky machine with less power than today’s smartphone. And Facebook was not yet a dream of Mark Zuckerberg , a 13-year-old middle school student.
Within four years, it was history, beaten into submission by better, faster computers with bigger screens and the capability to hold a whole lot more data. But the Trash 80 paved the way for what was to come.
The laptop paved the way for the smartphone and the tablet, and the best way to collectively describe these computerized devices today is to simply say they are everywhere. Technology constantly evolves.
Given this history, there’s no reason to believe cultured meat and seafood are going to go away. The products are just going to get better.
High hopes
Upside Foods posted a missive to the chickens of the world after the FDA’s action:
“Dear chickens of the world, you may be dismissed from the dinner table.
“Why? Well, we have some juicy news for you. UPSIDE Foods has received a ‘No Questions Letter’ from the FDA. That’s good news for everybody – for the entire world, really. But for you? For chickens? It might be the best news ever. Let me explain.
“UPSIDE Foods makes cultivated meat. It’s not vegan or vegetarian, it’s delicious meat grown directly from animal cells. That’s right – animal cells. It might sound crazy, but it’s based on a simple principle: animal cells are the building blocks of the meat that we humans love so much.
“So how does it work? In a nutshell, we take a sample of animal cells, place them in a vessel we call a cultivator (you can see why we call it “cultivated meat”, and feed them the right blend of nutrients for them to multiply and grow. After about three weeks, the meat is harvested and ready to enjoy.”
It’s unlikely that cultured chicken will replace real chicken any time soon, but it will likely add competition in the market place in the not too distant future. “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10,” as Microsoft founder Bill Gates observed more than 25 years ago.
And what’s coming for the chicken-farming industry is coming for the commercial fishing industry, which is a problem for Alaska wherein operate some of the world’s least efficient salmon fisheries in a world where “carbon footprints” are becoming an increasing issue.
Researchers who examined the carbon footprint of salmon harvests in Bristol Bay, home to the state’s most valuable salmon fishery, concluded it takes significanlty less energy to catch, process and transport those salmon than is required for the preparation of meat products, but they noted there is room for major improvement.
Meanwhile, the researchers wrote, there were even bigger problems once the fish were brought ashore.
“Processors were almost unanimous in saying that they have installed energy efficient lighting and machinery whenever possible, but that the biggest problem is that there is not an electrical grid. All electricity is generated using relatively small-scale diesel generators, which are typically very inefficient,” they reported.
“Considering that Alaska has a fairly large potential for hydroelectric generation, considerable energy savings (as much as 50 percent of the energy associated with processing), could accrue with investments in regional
electric grids. However, it must be understood that building a hydroelectric grid is not the responsibility of the industry.”
Norwegian salmon farmers are blessed with living in a country that generates more than 95 percent of its electricity with hydropower, which offers them some assistance in trying to meet government requirements to reduce the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percnet by 2050.
Alaska fishermen face on such mandates, but fisheries efficiencies are expected to become an increasing issue in the market. And cultured seafood is expected to have the smallest carbon footprint of all.
“It’s a new seafood option that provides the same nutritional benefits as the most pristine wild-caught fish, without the mercury, microplastics, antibiotics and other contaminants common in wild and farmed fish,” according to Wildtype.
The wild salmon of Alaska will always have a market, given that the cost of producing the fish are nil. Nature takes care of that. But the value of the fish to the people who catch it depends on what markets do, and market competition invariably drives down price.
A Trash 80 with 24K of storage cost $1,000 in 1983, the equivalent of $2,992 in today’s dollars, according to the U.S. Inflation calculator. Kohls now has a Amazon Fire 7 16GB for $39.99.
It has a screen so much better than the Trash 80 that the two can’t even be compared. It has somewhere around 666,666-times the storage. And it can do things no one could imagine in the old days of the Trash 80, like forge a wireless connection to the internet.
The way you moved data with a Trash 80 was to put rubber couplings over the mouthpiece and ear piece of a telephone and hope the transmission to a mainstream computer somewhere on the other end of the phone line worked. Often it didn’t.
Categories: Commentary, Outdoors
The Alaska fishing industry prefers to catch salmon with boats powered by diesel going many miles offshore. To be sure, there are inshore set net fisheries, but they still require boats and diesel fuel. There is nothing efficient about either method. Alaska is blessed with abundant shoreline and and incredible amount of clean fresh and salt water. The only reason Alaska is not the fish farming giant of the industry is political opposition by fisherman who have invested staggering sums of money in vessels and permits. They like it just as it is. In that regard Alaskan fisherman are today’s version of England’s Luddites.
Alaska’s fishing industry touts the quality of the fish they bring to market. I am here to tell you that a consumer in Denver, Miami or New York City cannot identify any difference in quality between a Norwegian farmed fish versus an Alaskan boat caught fish. Let me clarify that, perhaps they can tell the difference because the Alaskan caught fish will inherently cost more to get to the dinner table.
I suspect this situation will not change until overseas fish farming completely overtakes the market.
Such bullshit. Supposing you could artificialy create seafood. Why salmon? why not lobster, crab, scallops? You know, the ones that cost money….gimme a break.
The Alaska fishing industry prefers to catch salmon with boats powered by diesel going many miles offshore. To be sure, there are inshore set net fisheries, but they still require boats and diesel fuel. There is nothing efficient about either method. Alaska is blessed with abundant shoreline and and incredible amount of clean fresh and salt water. The only reason Alaska is not the fish farming giant of the industry is political opposition by fisherman who have invested staggering sums of money in vessels and permits. They like it just as it is. In that regard Alaskan fisherman are today’s version of England’s Luddites.
Alaska’s fishing industry touts the quality of the fish they bring to market. I am here to tell you that a consumer in Denver, Miami or New York City cannot identify any difference in quality between a Norwegian farmed fish versus an Alaskan boat caught fish. Let me clarify that, perhaps they can tell the difference because the Alaskan caught fish will inherently cost more to get to the dinner table.
I suspect this situation will not change until overseas fish farming completely overtakes the market.
This great. No more bones in my fish.
100’s of lives saved every year from choking hazard.
Does this mean no more bones in my fish?
I find the bones so annoying.
This will save all the people who die each year choking on fish bones.
I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to eat cultured meat. The beyond meat products out there are much worse for you than actual meat…just look at the ingredients lists. Of course I fill my freezers with wild game and fish, have turkeys and chickens, and grow my own veggies in the summer time.
If cultured meat sit’s in a tray for, what was it six weeks, before it can be harvested how does it have any texture at all? Since meat is muscle and muscle is generated in large part by doing work, are they using this nutrient enhanced cultured meat product to do something while it grows or will this be like veal, foie gras, or the modern day store bought chicken that has either white stripe disease, spaghetti meat, woody breast, or green muscle disease?
I know it seems counterintuitive but perhaps the chickens are not excited about lab meat either.
Though their industrial lives are short perhaps they prefer some life over no life.
Lab meat could cause the extinction of industrially raised poultry.
If i was a white chicken i might find this horrifying and frightening enough to escape and sabotage their labs .
There are many creatures who live very short lives that would seem revolting to us but who are we to second guess a fly or a chicken?
Yet there are those among us who would deny them basic existence!
Interesting philosophical question. Is it better to have had a miserable life than no life?
Second to that is how to quantify a miserable life?
Through whose eyes?
White (?) chicken?
Mining for Electric Vehicle Batteries, Other Tech, Could Threaten Already Declining Salmon Population
TOPICS:BN Frank
NOVEMBER 27, 2022
https://www.activistpost.com/2022/11/mining-for-electric-vehicle-batteries-other-tech-could-threaten-already-declining-salmon-population.html
Interesting, isn’t it, how much focus remains on fresh water, where salmon spend only a small portion of their lives, than on the ocean, where salmon seem to be suffering their biggest declines. Or at least some salmon.
But I’m sure mining in third-world countries where environment standards are often weaken or non-existent is better than mining in the U.S. or Canada because third-world countries are far away.
Lab meat = abomination
Extra free Carbon helps plants grow and will widen the population ring away from equatorial zones .
Earth could become more productive.
In the words of football Legend Don Meredith “turn out the lights the party’s over” might someday be the beginning of the swan song for the commercial salmon fishing industry. Or perhaps the hatcheries might be replaced with culture cubes growing tasty Chinook salmon like meat instead of pushing out millions of less than tasty Pink salmon.
Salmon. What ever the future holds for commercial salmon fishing in Alaska, it is doubtful
that the industry here will be on the technology forefront.
It is interesting that the technological advances in the last decade or so have come in the processing sector, which is controlled by Outside interests, and not among fishermen, at least some of whom are still Alaskans, or government, which is Alaskan, but seems fundamentally unwilling to figure out how to make Alaska fisheries more efficient.
It is probably time for Limited Entry II to reduce permits in much of the state and increase the legal boat size in Bristol Bay. You cut the amount of burnt fuel almost in half if you have 200 Copper River gillnetters harvest 16,000 salmon instead of 400 harvesting 40 fish each.
Tasty chinook salmon like meat? No thanks. I prefer wild alaskan salmon thank you.
This has the potential to idle millions of acres of cropland currently used to produce meat and return it to functioning ecosystems. That means clean aquifers, clean surface waters, and less methane.
Where are they going to get the nutrients to feed the cultivated meat from, Brawndo? We all know Brawndo is the thirst mutilator and has what plants crave, but does it have what cultivated meat craves?