Current Foods, FoodSquared, Revo Foods and other alternative-seafood producers have established Future Ocean Foods, an organisation to promote the 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,” said the alliance in a statement.
Member businesses of the groups are manufacturers whose portfolios vary between “plant-based, fermentation and 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."
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 three billion people around the world eat 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.
