Steakholder Foods Prints Ready-to-Cook Cultivated Grouper

Singaporean Fish Dish — Image courtesy of Steakholder Foods

Steakholder Foods Ltd. announced that it has printed a ready-to-cook cultivated grouper fish product. As part of the partnership between the two companies, Steakholder Foods customized its bio-inks utilizing grouper cells provided by Umami Meats Pte Ltd.

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 fish dishes. The event came on the heels of the visit of the Israeli Prime Minister, who also watched the fish being printed and tasted the prototype.

The printing and bio-ink customization are steps to commercializing Steakholder Foods' 3D printer. Its bioprinting and bioink technologies are a production platform for structured hybrid and cultivated products that can facilitate various species, 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' 3D bio-printing technology and customized bio-inks.

Since receiving grouper fish cells from Umami, the Steakholder Foods team has been creating customized bio-inks and optimizing the taste and texture of its printed grouper, toward finalizing a prototype.

Unlike fully cultivated meat products, which require incubation and maturation after printing, the grouper fish product is ready to cook after printing due to technology that allows the mimicking of the flaky texture of cooked.

According to Arik Kaufman, CEO of Steakholder Foods, "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."