Cultivated seafood start-up Forsea Foods has put its cell-cultivated freshwater eel unagi creation to the test—the taste test, that is.
The cultivated seafood start-up hosted the first official tasting of its cultured freshwater eel at the chic Tel-Aviv restaurant “a” and welcomed a gathering of 40 guests.
The group included investors, journalists and key opinion leaders in the food industry, as well as representatives from the Japanese embassy and various Japanese food companies based in Israel.
Providing a sustainable and toxin-free fish supply
The cell-cultivated offerings were created by Forsea to reduce the strain of overfishing, and are created by growing organoids outside of their native water habitats.
The company’s method involves creating the ideal environment for fish cells to spontaneously assemble into tissue structures with the natural composition of fat, muscle and connective tissue.
It’s designed to emanate the growth process of these tissues in a living fish, aligning cell-based technology more closely with nature.
Reducing dependence on growth factors
The added benefits to this method of cell-cultivation is that it bypasses the scaffolding stage and dramatically reduces the dependence on costly growth factors. This makes the process highly scalable, raising its commercial viability as well price parity with traditionally aquafarmed eel meat.
Wild eel has been experiencing severe supply shortages due to overfishing, while aquafarming of eel remains difficult, and breeding eel in captivity remains elusive.
“Forsea’s unique organoid technology has the potential to overcome many of the industry bottlenecks in bringing cultivated meat to the consumer plate,” asserts CEO and co-founder of Forsea Roee Nir. “Since the start of the year, we made significant advancements in improving our cell lines. We also have been working diligently to enhance our recipes.”
