Understanding Cell-Cultured Seafood and Its Food Safety Challenges

Cellular agriculture, which uses advances in muscle tissue engineering for food production, has been proposed as a complementary method to conventional seafood production systems (i.e., aquaculture and wild-capture fisheries) to ensure a sustainable seafood supply for the expanding global population. Cell-cultured seafood offers many environmental and other advantages over harvesting wild seafood and aquaculture (farmed) production. According to the Good Food Institute alternate protein manufacturers and brands database, 54 companies headquartered in 19 countries are working on some aspect of cell-cultured seafood production. This article describes how cell-cultured seafood is produced and its potential food safety hazards, and it discusses tentative labeling terminology, commercialization challenges, and research needed to advance more cost-effective production, overcome consumer hesitance to buy, and assess societal and cultural impacts. Approaches by Canada and the United States to the regulation of cell-cultured seafood are also described. Regulators, seafood hazard analysis critical control point trainers, and other seafood safety or quality professionals need to understand how cell-cultured seafood is manufactured and its potential food safety hazards so that they can oversee safe production, handling, and regulation.