Rational optimism for the future of alternative seafood

Increased access to omega-3s is a must to scale the alt seafood industry

📸: Verdino Green Foods

About the author: Claire Bomkamp serves as Lead Scientist, Cultivated Meat & Seafood and is a member of GFI’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative. She focuses on analyzing the technical landscape of the cultivated seafood industry, identifying bottlenecks, and engaging researchers in order to move cultivated seafood technology forward.

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March 3rd is global Omega-3 day

Yes, it’s a real day of recognition; we did not make it up. Omega-3 Day was created to highlight the important health benefits of EPA and DHA omega-3s. These nutrients are also critically important to building a healthy and thriving alternative seafood industry.

Contrary to the popular idiom, there are not enough fish in the sea to sustainably feed our growing global population. Diversifying our seafood supply to include plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-derived products can have enormous benefits for the environment and for global food security. However, that's only true if the products meet expectations to promote demand. In other words, alternative proteins primarily need to compete on taste, price, and convenience with their conventional counterparts.

When it comes to seafood, this is still generally true, but nutrition may play a more central role than in other product categories. In particular, the fact that many seafood products are high in omega-3 fatty acids is a substantial motivating factor for some seafood consumers. The presence or absence of omega-3s may play a role in some people’s decision to choose plant-based or cultivated seafood.

As we heard in a recent Science of Alt Protein webinar by GFI grantee Dr. Sirli Rosenvald, polyunsaturated fats (a category that includes omega-3s) also play a key role in generating authentic fish flavors. For alternative seafood to compete, it will be essential to meet consumers' expectations of seafood as an omega-3-rich food.

That seems straightforward enough, right?

If consumers care that these products are high in omega-3s, it makes sense that alternative seafood companies would simply add omega-3s as ingredients in their products. After all, the fish and other aquatic animals that people consume don't actually produce omega-3s. Instead, those animals eat omega-3-producing microorganisms or other fish. By adding the correct types of omega-3s—especially the long-chain varieties such as EPA and DHA that are especially associated with seafood—in the correct ratios, alternative seafood producers can make their products nutritionally equivalent, or even superior, to conventional products. Problem solved!

But there’s a catch…

Even though marine microorganisms are the ultimate source of these compounds, the vast majority of the long-chain omega-3 ingredients on the market currently come from fish. Algal and other non-animal omega-3 ingredients are only available in much smaller quantities.

If we imagine the world we want—where tasty, affordable, nutritious alternative seafood products are widely available—and then think about the volume of long-chain omega-3 ingredients that would need to go into those products —we quickly realize that the currently available volumes of non-animal omega-3 sources are not going to be sufficient.

Key insights

In late 2023, we surveyed companies and academic researchers working on alternative meat and seafood to understand the omega-3-related challenges they face We'll be publishing a report within the next few months with our complete findings, but for now, here are three high-level insights:

1. Scale of the challenge: Accessing omega-3 ingredients is indeed a challenge, and survey respondents expect it to become a bigger challenge as they scale up. While many respondents from earlier-stage companies said that omega-3s weren't really a challenge for them yet, when we narrow in on those companies that are further into the product development process or already have a product on the market, it’s clear that accessing omega-3 ingredients is a substantial challenge for the majority of them. Furthermore, respondents expected this to be a bigger challenge in five years than it is today.

2. Nature of the challenge: We learned a bit more about the specific challenges faced by companies and researchers when working with omega-3 ingredients. The most commonly cited challenge was price, followed by trouble finding suppliers, shelf life, off-flavors, and long lead times. For ingredient suppliers interested in working with alternative protein companies, this provides a clear roadmap for what challenges their potential customers would like to see solved.

3. Types of ingredients: We also asked some specific questions about the types of omega-3 ingredients respondents are using and what they would be most interested in using in the future. While today's alternative meat and seafood industry relies almost exclusively on algae as a source of long-chain omega-3s, respondents expressed interest in diversifying to explore other sources. This could represent a largely untapped opportunity for suppliers of omega-3 ingredients from other marine microorganisms besides algae, plant molecular farming, or precision fermentation approaches where omega-3 synthesis genes are expressed by highly productive varieties of bacteria or yeast. Another promising opportunity for the development of new ingredients is encapsulation of omega-3s to protect them from oxidation. While very few respondents currently use such ingredients, the majority are at least interested in doing so. This is also consistent with our finding that shelf-life and off-flavors—both associated with oxidation—are common challenges.

What does this mean for the alt protein industry?

In January, I attended the GOED Exchange, a biannual conference for the omega-3 industry. For me, one of the most exciting parts of the conference was the amount of discussion and excitement about alternative sources of long-chain omega-3s. In just the past couple of years, it's clear that both algal oil and plant molecular farming have begun to take off, and that supplement and aquafeed manufacturers are increasingly interested in these and other alternative sources.

This means that in a few years, when we might have otherwise been approaching a major ingredient bottleneck, alternative protein companies may instead have access to omega-3 ingredients that are affordable, widely available, and well-matched to their needs and those of their customers. 

Not only will that make it possible for alternative seafood to compete on a level nutritional playing field, but it will also be more feasible to explore omega-3-enhanced versions of terrestrial alt protein products.

In short, while it's still true that we will need to see big changes in the omega-3 ingredient market before alternative protein—especially alternative seafood—can reach its full potential, I'm becoming increasingly optimistic that the changes we need to see are not only possible but likely!

GFI resources

While progress is underway on the technical front, it’s important that there is robust communication between alternative protein companies and ingredient suppliers. GFI maintains a company database that can make it easier for companies and suppliers to find each other. We recommend that omega-3 suppliers interested in working with alternative protein companies add themselves to the database and that alternative protein companies use it as a resource when looking for suppliers.

We also recently produced a pair of whitepapers on the climate and biodiversity benefits of alternative seafood. Together, these deep-dive reports make clear the essential role that seafood made from plants, fermentation, or cultivated cells can play in sustainably and efficiently filling the gap while also reducing seafood sector emissions and benefitting biodiversity.