Latest alternative seafood acquisition could accelerate cell-based lobster production

Cell-cultured protein producer Upside Foods, formerly Memphis Meats, has acquired Cultured Decadence, a Madison, Wisconsin-based cultivated seafood company, the firm announced Monday.

Cultivated meat, poultry and seafood is meat produced directly by growing animal cells, without the need to raise and slaughter animals. It is not vegan, vegetarian or plant-based.

Cultured Decadence was founded in 2020 and has developed proprietary cell-cultured seafood items, including lobster and other crustaceans.

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Cultured Decadence products will be sold under the Upside Foods brand, and the company will remain in Wisconsin and become Upside Foods' Midwest hub.

Upside Foods recently opened its Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center (EPIC) in California, where it will produce all of its cell-cultured meat, poultry and seafood items. In 2018, Tyson Foods, the world's largest poultry producer invested in the company.

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Last April, Cultured Decadence closed a $1.6 million (€1.3 million) pre-seed financing round to fund its efforts to create the first cell-cultured lobster meat in North America.

Investors in the oversubscribed round included Bluestein Ventures, Joyance Partners, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, gener8tor, GlassWall Syndicate, Bascom Ventures and China-based Dao Foods.

The company's technology utilizes the cells of shellfish, such as lobster, to make meat without the shell.

Last March, the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), a coalition representing makers of cell-cultured protein products, and the US seafood trade association the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) jointly called on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to support requirements for labeling these new products descriptively, accurately and consistently regarding what the products actually are and how they are made.