How Singapore start-up’s sustainable seafood grown from stem cells could disrupt global shrimp industry

Cellular agriculture has potential to disrupt global fishing industry, criticised for overexploiting fish stocks and human rights abuses, as well as farming

Singapore start-up Shiok Meats is one of several companies trying to crack cultivated meat production, but needs a hundredfold reduction in cost of its product

Reading Time:5 minutes

Companies around the world are conducting research into fish and seafood protein grown from stem cells in laboratories as an alternative to fishing for and farming seafood, which are not sustainable. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:45am, 16 Mar 2020Updated: 7:45am, 16 Mar 2020

At a laboratory in Singapore, researchers are working on a technology with the potential to disrupt the massive – and unsustainable – global shrimp industry.

Start-up Shiok Meats, founded by scientists Sandhya Sriram and Ka Yi Ling, is developing cell-based shrimp and seafood, as part of a growing global revolution in protein production. Cellular agriculture is billed as the future of food, as industries seek ways to reduce their reliance on factory farming.

“There are plant-based seafood companies, but they use plants to make artificial seafood, while we use stem cells to make real seafood meats,” says Sriram. “We do not support terms like ‘artificial’, ‘fake’ or ‘lab-grown’.”

She says sustainability is a major advantage of the cultivated meat industry, but not the only one. “It’s also clean and there’s no antibiotics, heavy metals, microplastics or animal cruelty.”

Shiok Meats’ founders Ka Yi Ling (right) and Sandhya Sriram are developing cell-based shrimp and seafood. Photo: Shiok Meats

The company aims to begin selling its first product, a cell-based shrimp dumpling, in Singapore by the end of next year, and has plans to expand to Hong Kong, India and Australia.

“Minced shrimp is a big market so we are working on that first,” says Sriram. The stem cells are extracted from locally farmed, antibiotic-free shrimps.