Current Foods, FoodSquared, Revo Foods, and other producers of alternative seafood have collaboratively founded Future Ocean Foods, an organization dedicated to advancing and promoting this innovative food category.
Future Ocean Foods comprises 36 member businesses spanning 14 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.
Its stated aim is to “promote food security, human health, environmental sustainability and ocean conservation,” said the alliance in a statement.
The group’s member businesses are manufacturers with diverse portfolios encompassing “plant-based, fermentation, cultivated-food, and technology.”
A common denominator among members is that all “have received significant venture capital from the world’s leading food and climate investors and are already working with large legacy seafood companies to create sustainable food options”.
“Alternative seafood is a relatively nascent but fast-growing industry, helping to solve key challenges facing the growing global demand for protein,” said the industry group.
Marissa Bronfman, executive director of Future Ocean Foods, said, “This is an incredible moment in time for the future of food and our oceans. Alternative seafood offers us the opportunity to build a more delicious, nutritious, sustainable and ethical global food system.”
Members of Future Ocean Foods have developed alternatives to seafood, including whole-cut salmon fillets, sushi-grade tuna, smoked salmon, flaky white fish, shrimp, crab, and calamari.
The alliance expressed its desire to propel the alternative protein industry “beyond the burger and the nugget,” transcending North American dietary norms. The group emphasizes the significance of this shift, pointing out that “more than three billion people around the world rely on seafood as their primary source of protein.”
“There have been enormous recent developments in advancing the taste, texture, nutrition and price of seafood alternatives,” it said..
The industry organisation said that “invested capital into the space grew 92% from 2021 to 2022 and US retail sales grew 42% over a similar period,” without citing the source of data.
The relevance of this step is that global fisheries are predicted to collapse by 2048, “due to human-led destruction and climate change”, said the group.
“The global seafood industry is projected to surpass $700bn by 2030, however, wild catch and aquaculture simply cannot – and should not – fulfil this demand,” Future Ocean Foods said.
“As we prepare for a future population of ten billion people by 2050, the need for creating and scaling sustainable protein sources has never been more urgent.”
Jon Burton, a business unit director for marine protein at seafood giant Thai Union, told an industry conference recently that the biggest barrier to shoppers choosing alternatives to seafood is the health benefits they see in eating traditional seafood.