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– A new study produced for the European Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries argued that seafood alternatives need stricter labeling laws to help consumers avoid confusion over product origins and to protect EU fisheries from unfair competition.
The study was commissioned in an attempt to understand the challenges that the alternative seafood market presents to the conventional one, and to study whether the labeling practices currently used by alternative seafood companies represent a violation of the EU Food Information to Consumers Regulation, which barrs misleading food information on packaging.
Europêche, which represents the EU’s fishing sector, celebrated the publication's release.
"This is not about plant-based vs seafood," Europêche Managing Director Daniel Voces said in a statement. "It’s about truth in advertising. When a consumer picks up a product, they deserve to know exactly what it is, what it contains and how it’s made. This study provides a constructive roadmap to get us there."
According to the study, many alternative seafood producers are out of compliance with the regulation. They use a variety of strategies, the report said, to sidestep the rules. The report, which analyzed 102 companies from 28 countries producing 228 products, found that 45 percent of the products studied used “invented names suggesting a relation with seafood, most often with little information to provide a fully descriptive denomination.”
“In 57 percent of the cases, a direct referent to the terms ‘fish’ or ‘fish species’ is made, with only 13 percent of the cases clarifying the link between the invested name and the fish species name," the report noted.
The study also found that the most commonly imitated seafood species – tuna, whitefish, salmon, shrimp, and crab – are also the most popular conventional seafood species. The study’s authors said that this finding "indicates that the companies involved in the plant-based seafood substitutes’ market supply competing products, often referring to the original counterpart during the marketing process.”
Ultimately, the study recommended that the European Parliament consider stricter labeling laws that would draw clear distinctions between conventional fish and the alternative proteins. The key suggestions were that the use of the name of a particular aquatic species be barred, that the name of the main ingredient or ingredients of the alternative be prominently featured on its packaging, and that the level of processing be indicated on the product’s packaging.
–Delaware, U.S.A.-based Juicy Marbles, which produces marbled vegan plant-based steaks, tenderloins, and ribs, has teamed up with Austrian start up Revo foods to release Kinda Cod, a raw plant-based cod filet in a partnership branded as “Juicy Marbles and Friends.”
The partnership is intended to help both companies avoid the pitfalls that many alternative protein startups have faced in the last five years.
Revo CEO Robin Simsa said the plant-based protein market had grown increasingly volatile, spurred by the collapse of numerous startups “founded in 2020 and 2021 [which] tried to do everything themselves.”
These companies, Simsa said, were often massively overvalued by investors who had unrealistic expectations of how quickly the sector would be able to scale and bring in large numbers of customers. Many of those startups faced challenges because it is too capital intensive to produce all alternative proteins in house, he said.
“Our collaboration with Juicy Marbles is a prime example of how partnership can bring the whole field forward by allowing startups with different strengths to focus on their core expertise. Juicy Marbles has built an international brand and distribution network, which most European brands have never achieved. We have pent up demand for our products from the U.S. that we’ve been unable to supply," Simsa said. “I think this collaborative mindset is key to ushering in a new, more mature era for the plant-based industry.”
Juicy Marbles Co-founder Luka Sinček concurred, saying that bringing a whole alternative fish fillet to market “wouldn’t be possible [for Juicy Marbles] if we insisted on doing everything in-house. If our customers want something we cannot produce – that someone else has already done a fantastic job with – why not find a way to bring it to them?”
Juicy Marbles Co-Founder and CEO Tilen Travnick added that the partnership will speed production capacity and allow his company to respond to its customers’ needs faster.
The Juicy Marbles team said that it was sold on the partnership once it tried Revo’s cod.
“It flaked into tender pieces like a proper filet. [It] had the subtle, not too ‘oceany’ flavor we always hoped for. And it’s perhaps the only fish alternative we felt we could use in serious cookery,” Co-Founder and R&D Chief Maj Hrovat said in a release.
The 110-gram fillets are made via fermentation with fungi-based mycoprotein and contain omega-3s from microalgae oil. The companies said they are an excellent source of vitamins B12 and B6, dietary fiber, and folate.
Kinda Cod is only the first product which Juicy Marbles hopes to co-brand with other companies that are innovating the alternative protein space.
"Juicy Marbles & Friends will be a selection of amazing products that suit all different tastes, health goals, and price ranges, making plant-based whole cuts more accessible than ever,” said Sinček.
–Queensland, Australia-based James Cook University (JCU) and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) have announced a research breakthrough that uses seaweed to replace conventional ingredients in cell cultured media, potentially making cultivated proteins more sustainable.
UMAMI Bioworks served as an industry partner for the project, entitled SeaToMeat-Optimizing Seaweed Proteins to Cultivate Meat, which is based in the Tropical Futures Institute (TFI), a shared research institute out of the two universities.
Traditional cell-cultured media is in high demand, and the TFI researchers believe they have found a sustainable, circular alternative that could respond to a challenge that so many cultivated protein startups have struggled with: affordably scaling for mass production.
“By breaking down seaweed and its proteins into smaller components, we can create a more affordable and sustainable way to feed the animal cells used in cellular agriculture,” SIT’s Principal Investigator Associate Professor Juan Du said.
“If successful, the project could reduce the cost of cultivated meat production and lower dependence on conventional ingredients, supporting a more sustainable and ethical food system,” SIT's Head of Health Sciences Professor Andreas Lopata said.
