Forward-looking fish
005.
Welcome to Pluripotent — it’s Thursday, June 25th. A friend recently gifted to me a copy of Salvador Dali's surrealist cookbook, Les Diners de Gala, and it is wild. Reminds me a lot of Koert van Mensvoort's In Vitro Meat Cookbook, a wacky but crucial companion to any cellular agriculture nerd’s bookshelf. Check it out. As ever, news tips can be patched through to me via direct message, and feel free to follow me over at @chasepurdy.
NEW YORK — There’s something disarming in how Lou Cooperhouse chooses to approach the concept of selling future fish.
His demeanor exudes all the qualities of a decidedly quiet and calm businessperson. In this respect, he stands apart in a field pushing cellular agriculture ever-closer to market. Now the CEO of San Diego-based BlueNalu, his background isn't rooted in vegan activism or academia. In fact, he's spent much of his career working for traditional food companies, the likes of ConAgra, Campbell's Soup, Nestlé-funded Culinary Brands, and F&S Produce.
And it’s perhaps this experience that informs his public-facing approach at BlueNalu, which is looking to grow and sell cultured fish. He’s careful to avoid language that would risk upsetting the established market—a far cry from strategies employed by Mark Post, who has in interviews said his goal “is to replace the entirety of livestock production with cultured meat.” It’s also very different from how Pat Brown talks about his own plant-based Impossible Foods products. The Impossible Foods impact report from 2019 stated clearly that the company’s goal is to “replace the need for animals as a food-production technology — globally, by 2035.”
I reached Cooperhouse this week to learn more about BlueNalu’s latest announcement, which included news that, coming off a $20 million Series A funding round, the company has signed a lease on a new 38,000 square-foot facility that will include its first pilot production plant. So far in the field, the only companies to publicly disclose the existence or construction of their own pilot plants include JUST (with 1,000-liter bioreactors), Memphis Meats, Mosa Meat, and Future Meat Technologies. BlueNalu says it’s aiming to produce 200 to 500 lbs of fish per week within the next 18 months. To be sure, constructing a pilot production facility is big news in this small corner of food world.
In contrast to Post and Brown, Cooperhouse talks about BlueNalu’s future in equally pragmatic and mechanical terms. He describes a future in which the company works within the existing market, pulling levers in future production facilities to switch on and off production of specific species of fish to accommodate fluctuations in the larger market. Supplies of mahi mahi are low? Cooperhouse will flip a switch to ramp up production to meet the demand. Supplies of red snapper are high? He’ll pull a figurative lever to decrease BlueNalu’s production. In some ways, he speaks about his company as one that—at least initially—hopes to fill gaps in the market rather than gun for market share.
This decidedly ‘elbows-in’ approach is reflected in conversations BlueNalu says it’s having with congressional lawmakers in Washington DC—including the Ocean caucuses. For reference, the caucus includes senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), and Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin). On the House side, the caucus counts Suzanne Bonamici (Oregon) and Don Young (Alaska) among its members. As Cooperhouse describes these conversations, hints of Silicon Valley-style disruption are avoided by talking about how the company plans to focus on developing fish products for species that the US largely imports. In other words, you won’t find Cooperhouse knocking on Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski’s office door to discuss cell-cultured salmon.
"Why focus on species that America does well?” he says. "We're not here to replace anybody, we're here to compliment the current food system."
So far, reception to BlueNalu’s technology on Capitol Hill has been encouraging and positive, Cooperhouse says. He noted that one theme that continues to crop up during meetings with lawmakers is food security.
That’s surprising, as other CEOs in cellular agriculture have noted that food security is typically prioritized in conversations with investors and regulators in Singapore, China, and the UAE. The subject usually takes a backseat in discussions with American venture capitalists and regulators. But perhaps this is one of the ways in which the seafood industry is inherently different from the companies looking to grow red meat and poultry products.
“It's a very, very large supply chain that's imported,” Cooperhouse says. “And seafood supplies are increasingly threatened.”
The new pilot production plant, BlueNalu’s continued activity in Washington DC, and its latest funding round make it a fascinating company to track as the field develops. To be sure, the company appears well-placed to play a role in defining how cell-cultured foods are introduced to the popular imagination.
Somewhat unrelated: You are not crazy. Yes, BlueNalu has started to include “forward-looking statements” on its press releases. The company has included them since the start of 2020. Cooperhouse says adding these sorts of statements isn’t uncommon for many companies (though it is for cell-cultured companies) and that the change was suggested by BlueNalu’s attorneys.
In other news…
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have launched an inquiry (pdf) into US meat companies and their Covid-19 figures.
There are more than 32,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 109 deaths to date among food system workers, at least 27,000 of those are among meatpacking workers, according to Leah Douglas' reporting at FERN.
Hakai Magazine published a fascinating story on the Alt Meat Lab at UC Berkeley. Turns out Nestlé tapped the lab for its foray into a chicken alternative.
Stumbled on this super-interesting Twitter thread on the pitfalls of cellular agriculture in a capitalist system.
The Good Food Institute has created a cache of cultured meat photos under Creative Commons licenses, hoping it’ll help stymy the number of lab photos seen on media stories and (ultimately) Google searches.
That’s all for now. If you’re bored this afternoon, I’m participating in a Reddit AMA from 12pm to 1pm EDT. And for an evening this week, I highly, highly suggest checking out the documentary on Netflix called Disclosure. It’ll help you learn/realize so much about the trans experience. Truly an important film, and told through the voices of trans people. Until next time, have a great weekend.