“There’s a statistic from 10 years ago that only 10% of aquaculture is based on genetically improved strains. “So I think for companies that just want to run to get to that market it’s going to be a challenge, but those like BlueNalu who are coming with new ways of manufacturing food, not coming up with new formulations, there’s going to be an opportunity in the next couple of years to raise perception.” “Consumers see it as an expensive novelty, they don’t repeat purchases as frequently as they should, they’re not repeating it two or three times a week, their price premium is still significant, and the reality is that inflation right now is hurting the consumers,” Ania said.
Within the cell-based sector, he also noted that there is an extraordinary amount of competition over intellectual property, which is not nearly so prevalent amid the plant-based protein industry.Īrturo Ania, CEO of algal oil supplement producer Mara Renewables, also said he believes that plant-based seafood has not gained as much commercial traction as investors have hoped for. “So the market around plant-based is frankly immaterial to us.” “Even the National Fisheries Institute of America has taken a stand that plant-based seafood is not seafood so don’t call it that, but in our case it definitely is.” “We’re actually making - as the Food and Drug Authority describes it - the same thing as conventional seafood, just made in a new way unlike plant-based, which is not seafood,” he told listeners. “Those sorts of questions we get a lot,” she said. “We get asked how can we bring to all the other species, you know, the seabass industry in the Mediterranean, or can we use it with shellfish like warmwater ? We need those partners that are farmers that are working on the other side of the industry to help us to provide that ,” she said.įernandez said more humane slaughter - such as through electric stunning - is now well-established for species like salmon. “ we know that we cannot do it on our own. Then I can talk about animal welfare ,” she said. “Perhaps we can use satellite imagery or other new technologies to tell me what the biomass is, which relates to stocking density. “The UK has been a pioneer in asking about that information although we see other parts of the world are slowly catching up,” she said.Ĭurrently Hilton Seafood relies on its own due diligence or third-party certification bodies, such as Aquaculture Stewardship Council, to assess animal welfare standards, but in future hopes data sharing and new technology will help with transparency. “The point of that is to ensure minimum risk and mortality.”Īccording to Berger, the Hofseth Group currently operates 12,000t of open net conventional salmon farms as well, which it aims to grow to 14,000t by 2025. “If you look at the World Heritage Salmon project, we’re just pushing fjord water around so it’s going to be ocean-reared land-based,” he continued. “The other thing is to ensure supply will come on in a copious way, you need to have low-risk supply coming on and if you are growing fish in their natural environment, that’s actually the lowest risk way of doing that.” And the speed at which affordable salmon is coming onstream from land-based projects is very, very slow,” he told listeners. “Demand is growing but what people don’t realize is that supply is pretty fixed. What if we also use it for bivalves?”īien also suggested that part of the company’s revenues could be used to repopulate depleted mangroves.īerger, who is also chief commercial officer with salmon byproduct manufacturer Hofseth Biocare, believes that this and other similar flow-through systems will be just as necessary as fully recirculating land-based projects in the future. “So what if we took that water and we surround the enclosures of biosecurity zones, then we took the rest of it and made it available for carbon sequestration work, by others or by ourselves. “For example, at Forever Oceans we have 200,000 hectares of water that we own for the long-term, for over 20 years, thanks to the partnerships that we form with our local governments,” he explained. Secondly, he said, the company would be “thinking of our production zones as protection zones”.
“But I want to do more, so what I’m working with with outside parties is I want to identify how an offshore farm can become carbon neutral through a change in our operations - we will have to buy offsets like everyone else will, but most of it can be done in-house.”įirstly, he stressed, the company would be looking to change its power supply to renewable sources, whether tidal, wave, wind or solar. Forever Oceans, which operates amberjack farms off the coasts of Panama, Brazil and Indonesia, will this year be obtaining Aquaculture Stewardship Council and Best Aquaculture Practices certifications, Bien continued.