Current Foods, FoodSquared, Revo Foods and other alternative-seafood producers have recently established Future Ocean Foods, an organisation to promote the Seafood Alternative category.
Future Ocean Foods’ membership includes 36 businesses across 14 countries including the US, Canada, the UK and Singapore.
Its stated aim is to “promote food security, human health, environmental sustainability and ocean conservation.” Its members include manufacturers whose portfolios vary from plant-based, fermentation to cultivated-food. 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. 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.”
Future Ocean Foods members have created seafood alternatives ranging from whole-cut salmon filets, sushi-grade tuna, smoked salmon and flaky white fish to shrimp, crab and calamari..
The alliance said it wants to move the alternative protein industry “beyond the burger and the nugget, and past North American diets,” which the group argues is a crucial move, as “more than 3 billion people around the world eat seafood as their primary source of protein.”
The industry organisation said that invested capital into the space grew 92% from 2021 to 2022.
According to the alliance, global fisheries are predicted to collapse by 2048, due to human-led destruction and climate change. The global seafood industry is projected to surpass US$700 billion by 2030, however, wild catch and aquaculture simply cannot fulfil this demand.
As the world prepares for a future population of 10 billion by 2050, the need for creating and scaling sustainable protein sources has never been more urgent.
