Steakholder Foods 3D bioprints first ready-to-cook cultivated grouper fish

Steakholder Foods, an international deep-tech food company at the forefront of the cultivated meat industry, has announced that it has successfully printed the first ready-to-cook cultivated grouper fish product. As part of the strategic partnership between the two companies, Steakholder Foods customized its bio-inks utilizing grouper cells provided by Umami Meats.

To celebrate this achievement, 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 its Israel facilities. 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 event came hot on the heels of the visit of the Israeli Prime Minister, who also watched the fish being printed firsthand and tasted the prototype, becoming the first Prime Minister ever to taste 3D-printed cultivated fish.

The printing and bio-ink customization are steps on the path to commercializing 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 hard at work creating customized bio-inks and optimizing the taste and texture of its printed grouper, towards finalizing a prototype. The 3D fish printing 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.

"We're excited to be working with Umami Meats to develop 3D-printed structured fish products that have the same great taste and texture as traditionally caught fish, without harming the environment," said Kaufman. "With an estimated size of US$110 billion and projected growth of 3-4% annually in the near future, the seafood and fish market is a long-time part of our vision for introducing sustainable solutions that increase food security. Having created a customized bio-ink that works effectively with Umami's cells and optimized the taste and texture to meet the high standards of consumers, we anticipate expanding our collaborations to a greater variety of species with additional partners."

"We are delighted to have produced the world's first whole fillet cultivated fish in partnership with Steakholder Foods," added Pershad, CEO of Umami Meats. "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."