Bluu Seafood specialises in cultured fish. Fish fingers, fish balls and caviar have already been produced from the cells of Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout. The startup emerged from the Lübeck-based Fraunhofer Research Institution for Marine Biotechnology and Cell Technology (EMB), where co-founder Dr Sebastian Rakers was also employed for many years.
Together with entrepreneur Simon Fabich, the cell and marine biologist founded Bluu Seafood (then known as Bluu Biosciences). A pilot plant has been in operation in Hamburg since 2024. Bluu Seafood has applied for authorisation for its products in Singapore and the USA.
Dr Cornelius Lahme, responsible for marketing and communication at Bluu Seafood, talks to us in an interview about why the cultivation of fish is so important, what exactly the division of labour at Bluu Seafood looks like and what some lobbying against cultured meat has to do with lentil soup.
Mr Lahme, why do you think the cultivation of fish products is important?
Some animals have a lobby, others do not. When it comes to fish, people’s compassion is limited. Or how else can you explain the fact that people think it’s great, for example, to take photos of cutters out at sea hauling in their nets full of fish? Nobody would think of taking a photo of a lorry full of pigs or chickens being taken to the slaughterhouse. People would do well to think about the oceans and their inhabitants.
Is that the reason why you joined Bluu Seafood?
Yes, I think it’s important to do something about overfishing and pollution of the oceans. And the technology behind cell cultivation is almost too good to be true: the flavour is preserved, animal suffering is avoided and the environment is protected.
I became aware of Bluu Seafood through media reports. It’s not just about making money, but also about delivering added value to society. This social impact is important to me.
What do you see as your role at Bluu Seafood?
I want to help create a kind of welcoming culture for alternative proteins. Because the technology behind cellular agriculture is still too abstract for many consumers. We have to get people on board.
‘We’ at Bluu Seafood are 33 employees from 13 different countries. Your start-up was founded in Lübeck, but the company is now based on the premises of the old marzipan factory in Hamburg-Altona. Why the move?
Hamburg was the perfect location because the setting is excellent. In autumn 2023, for example, a new economic cluster was established in the food sector. This Hamburg Food Cluster is a network designed to provide targeted support for the food industry. The city is also internationally orientated, as is our company. Apart from that, the proximity to Lübeck, where many Bluu Seafood employees have already settled, is also an advantage.
What exactly does the work at Bluu Seafood look like?
We work in four research teams. The first team is responsible for creating cell lines. The first step is to take cell samples from a fish. Bluu Seafood specialises in Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout. Once the best cells have been selected from the sample, they are used to create immortalised, i.e. immortal, cell lines. At Bluu Seafood, this is done without genetic engineering.
What happens next?
Now the second team comes into play. It takes care of the culture medium in which the cells grow. The liquid should not contain any other animal components – in other words, it should do without foetal calf serum – and at the same time be as cheap as possible.
And who is responsible for the actual cultivation?
The third team ensures that the cells multiply well in a large container known as a fermenter. The speciality of Bluu Seafood is that no microcarriers are used. These carriers are small spherical materials, such as carrier beads, to which the cells can cling. Cells generally prefer to grow on surfaces. If left as it is, this two-dimensional growth would require huge surfaces. Anyone who wants to cultivate cells must therefore introduce a third dimension in good time: This is exactly what microcarriers are used for.
Why are microcarriers not used in your company?
The problem is that these beads have to be removed again before the cells can be further processed. That costs time and money. At Bluu Seafood, we have found a method for the cells to cope in the nutrient solution without help. We have trained and motivated the cells to go into the third dimension on their own, so to speak. And that’s not so easy, because the nutrient fluid is constantly moving. The cells not only have to survive the so-called shear forces, but also continue to grow.
How does cell harvesting work?
Once the cells have divided and multiplied sufficiently, the contents are centrifuged and the biomass is skimmed off. As we are still in the pilot phase, we are currently working with tanks that hold around 50 to 500 litres. Later, when production is on a large scale, larger fermenters will probably be used, with a total volume of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of litres. The largest fermenters for animal cells currently have a maximum capacity of 25,000 litres.
So how is the cell mass turned into something edible?
Team four turns the whole thing into food. It has the task of mixing the cell mass with plant proteins – for example soy – to produce a hybrid product. Bluu Seafood has already developed fish fingers, fish balls and caviar in this way.
Why should consumers choose these novel foods?
The bottom line is that the products taste just as good as conventional seafood. The advantage, however, is that there is no negative impact on the oceans. In addition, unlike caught fish, cultured fish is guaranteed not to contain any microplastics or heavy metals as we closely monitor every step of the process. In my opinion, fish is therefore particularly suitable for cultivation.
What do you mean by that?
In the case of beef, chicken and pork, we already have a great deal of influence on what the animals eat and what is found in their meat through their feed. In the case of fish – provided it is wild-caught – the food intake is mostly beyond human control. And because fish from industrial aquacultures are often not farmed sustainably and, depending on the species, large quantities of antibiotics are also used, they are not the only solution for the future.
Unfortunately, your cultivated products are not yet on the market…
It is not yet possible to buy our cultivated seafood, as it has not yet been authorised in the European Union. However, we have submitted a corresponding application for Singapore and the USA. We also want to sell in the EU, but first, we are looking for a country where the bureaucratic hurdles are not so high, or where we are even taken along and supported.
If you have a licence, where can consumers get your food?
Initially, the products will probably be available in selected restaurants. In the short term, the aim is to arouse curiosity. Later on, it is quite conceivable that we will act as a supplier for food companies, for example in the frozen food sector. I imagine it to be like the semiconductor company Intel. Its PC processor is also a component of many different computer brands. In any case, it makes more sense to work together with partners than to compete with them.
However, there are still a few obstacles to overcome before we get to that point. Where do you currently see the biggest challenges?
In addition to the issues of ‘approval’ and ‘low-cost nutrient solution’, scaling, i.e. production on a larger scale, is one of the main challenges we face. It’s clear that the technology works. Now everything has to be one size bigger. We are now at the point where photovoltaics was in the 1980s. Back then, to put it simply, there were only solar-powered pocket calculators. Today, the technology makes an important contribution to the energy mix.
If the cultivation of meat develops in a similar way to photovoltaics, what needs to be considered on this growth path?
In the process of scaling up, it is not only important to keep convincing investors to finance the work. The cells also have to withstand higher loads in the larger tanks with more nutrient liquid than in smaller fermenters. There are completely different forces at work. I like to compare this to a person swimming. There is a difference between swimming my laps in a swimming pool and in the roaring Atlantic.
Not only in terms of technical implementation, but also in terms of social acceptance, there are a few obstacles to overcome…
Yes, even away from the fermenters, there are sometimes forces brewing that cause problems for the cultured meat idea. Recently, for example, a study by the University of California (UC) in Davis criticised the idea of cultured meat. The study comes to the conclusion that cultured meat has a poor environmental balance and could cause up to 25 times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional animal meat. I don’t think much of the study.
Why not?
Mainly because it has not undergone a peer review process. This is a method used in the scientific community to ensure the quality of a study. Independent reviewers from the same discipline (peers) scrutinise the paper. The authors must face up to the criticism and either include it in their work or refute it. Only then can the study be published in a serious manner. I also doubt the validity of the UC Davis study.
In what way?
The cultured meat sector is still at a low scaling stage. The study has simply extrapolated the current values. That would be like me cooking lentil soup in my small kitchen and trying to derive Erasco’s energy consumption from it. Apart from that, the development in the energy sector was not taken into account. When our cultivation technology is ready, renewable energy will also have a much larger share in the energy mix. For me, publications of this kind are an expression of strong lobbying against cell-based meat production.
How do you deal with this?
Some people find it difficult to make the switch. Or they don’t want to give up. It’s our job to take them along with us. Especially as the cultivation of fish like Bluu Seafood solves problems that are not taken into account in any way when selling conventional fish. For example, if the trawl nets turn over the soil when fishing, the ecological follow-up costs are not included in the price of the fish.
Further information: bluu.bio
This article was provided by journalist and vegconomist guest author Susanne van Veenendaal. As part of her book project on cultured meat entitled ‘The new meat culture – Why cultured meat can be good for animals, people and the environment’, on which Susanne van Veenendaal is working together with Christoph Werner and Bastian Huber from cultured-meat.shop, she is talking to various German companies, researchers and initiatives in the industry.
