If you’re a fan of dishes like sushi and ceviche, you’ve likely eaten fish grown in aquaculture farms, along with wild, ocean-caught fish. However, you’ve probably never tasted lab-grown salmon, made from cells cultured in large steel tanks.
Wildtype’s cell-cultured salmon isn’t the first lab-grown meat available in the United States, but it’s the first seafood product to earn FDA safety approval. The California-based company received a “no questions” letter in May 2025, which means that the FDA considers the product as safe as “comparable foods produced by other methods.” Since then, Wildtype’s sushi-grade coho salmon has appeared at several restaurants in California, Oregon, Washington, and Texas.
Wildtype’s cell-cultured salmon is created on the site of a former microbrewery in San Francisco, where the Pacific salmon cells grow in a nutrient-rich mix of amino acids, fat, glucose, salt, and vitamins. After this process is complete, the cells are rinsed in a centrifuge and mixed with plant-based ingredients to create the final product. Although opinions vary on how similar it tastes to real salmon, it certainly resembles a block of fish, complete with the typical pinkish-orange hue and thin lines of fat. However, unlike farmed or wild-caught salmon, Wildtype’s fish can be grown in around two weeks, compared to the two years it takes for a living fish to mature.
According to Wildtype, the goal is not to replace the role of fisheries and fish farms, but to meet the increasing demand for seafood. Despite the pressures on wild stocks, global fish consumption is projected to grow by nearly 80 percent over the next 25 years. In addition to helping meet this demand and address food security, lab-grown seafood like Wildtype’s salmon is likely to have fewer contaminants and use less water and energy than commercial fishing. There’s also less waste involved, as the entire cultivated fish product is used.
However, Wildtype and similar companies face significant challenges. There are fewer financial backers for cell-derived meat than there were just five years ago, and consumer interest in both plant-based and lab-grown proteins seems to have plateaued. Although companies like Mission Barns (cultivated pork) and Upside Foods and Eat Just (cultivated chicken) have received FDA approval to sell lab-grown meat in select restaurants, the products have yet to gain commercial traction. At least for now, most are seen as novelties and typically appear at culinary events or on expensive tasting menus.
What's that on your plate?
- Further complicating matters, numerous U.S. states have either banned or tried to ban lab-grown meat, a classification which also includes lab-grown seafood in some cases.
- Later this year, the food tech startup Mission Barns will get its cultivated meatballs and bacon on the shelves at Sprouts Farmers Market stores in the Bay Area, marking the first time that cultivated meat is sold at a U.S. supermarket chain.
- Singapore has long been a pioneer in the cultivated meat industry, with cultivated chicken from Eat Just’s Good Meat brand appearing in restaurants in 2021 and as a retail product at Huber’s Butchery in 2023.
