NEW YORK, May 18 — Meat and fish alternatives aren’t the only things being grown in labs, because scientists are also working on reproducing luxury foods such as caviar, in particular to address animal welfare issues.

From meat to salmon, tuna, oysters, and now caviar! A South Korean start-up recently announced that it has succeeded in producing sturgeon eggs in a lab. The firm doesn’t go into detail about the process, other than that it is based on shrimp and seaweed, and that it is inspired by the Oscietra variety of caviar. This lab-made caviar is said to have a less intensely salty taste than that of Oscietra caviar, and a different texture to traditional sturgeon roe. Above all, CellMeat — the name of the company behind the research — boasts that it could offer the famous luxury dish without having to kill a single sturgeon.

This is a no-brainer for the start-up, which has previously developed its own culture medium for the development of edible cell tissues as an alternative to the controversial foetal bovine serum. To stimulate the production of a piece of meat from stem cells, it is necessary to add a kind of elixir rich in nutrients, growth factors and hormones, taken from a suckling cow sent to slaughter. In addition to its astronomical production cost, one of the major challenges for cell culture lies in the ability of laboratories to use a synthetic serum. The aim is to resolve the issue of animal welfare. Companies producing cultured meat cannot claim to be addressing this if they continue to use fetal bovine serum.

Finding alternatives to killing sturgeon

Globally, this South Korean product is not the first attempt at making alt caviar. In the United Kingdom, another firm claims to have developed the first caviar produced without animals. Exmoor Caviar, which has a sturgeon farm in Devon, also uses its black eggs to extract cells. The company has joined forces with UK scientists to develop a lab-grown caviar, which is sold under its own brand. Company boss Ken Benning said earlier this year that this production method would not drastically reduce the price of the highly sought-after delicacy, but instead make it more ethically acceptable. "Being ethical is the new luxury,” he told Business Insider.

The South Korean company CellMEAT uses the same argument to explain the reasons for its research, pointing out that sturgeon can be disembowelled alive to extract the precious eggs. This isn’t always the case, however, as the roe is also recovered after killing the sturgeon, as confirmed on the websites of producer brands such as Sturia or Kaviari. However, the caviar manufacturer De Neuvic, based in France, states on its website that there are in vitro reproduction methods that do not kill female sturgeon. An injection of hormones followed by a caesarean section allows the eggs to be collected. Nevertheless, the French brand shares its doubts about the quality of this type of caviar, which may theoretically be unfit for consumption in Europe, according to its blog.

Beyond the debate on the methods of harvesting sturgeon eggs, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) points out that several species of sturgeon are considered threatened with extinction and that their population has declined by 70 per cent over the last century, due to overfishing, water pollution and habitat destruction. WWF states that, when it comes to caviar, legal fishing, which is highly controlled, is not enough to meet demand. Trafficking is therefore flourishing and threatens species that are already decimated, the organisation states. Since caviar is often seen as a luxurious and refined delicacy, research into recreating it without having to sacrifice sturgeons is likely to be an area of increasing interest. — ETX Studio