First lab-grown ‘clean caviar’ created in UK

THE world’s first lab grown caviar is being developed by a British company as the luxury product goes fish-free.

Businessman Kenneth Benning, who opened England’s first caviar farm in Devon in 2013, has teamed up with scientists from University College London to grow the sturgeon eggs in a lab.

Currently, the product is so expensive because the fish take years to reach sexual maturity – between six and 25 years depending on the species, meaning a long wait for eggs.

Mr Benning believes it will be “socially unacceptable” to eat caviar harvested from a sturgeon in coming decades, and has therefore patented a way to recreate the eggs using cells from the animal’s egg sac. His company, Caviar Biotec, already makes skincare products from the placenta, which contains nutrients and omega three.

However, the most ground-breaking product at Caviar Biotec is “clean caviar”, which is being grown from sturgeon cells. Mr Benning explained: “We will be producing it without the use of the fish. Then we will basically grow the whole egg in a lab in a bioreactor.”

He believes that, within one year, his team can make more caviar than the entire current global production in a room less than 300 square metres.

Using host cells, the DNA of sturgeon eggs can be grown at fast rates, and this genetic information is then used to grow eggs from scratch. The lab is currently set up to produce 500kg of caviar every two months. Unlike in the womb of a sturgeon, there is no limit to how much the scientists can grow the eggs. Many caviar consumers covet large eggs, so every tin could contain caviar beads of a specified size.

The Vegan Society will not certify the product as vegan, as it is grown from animal cells. A spokesman said: “Like with lab-grown meat, we understand that an animal, or in this instance a fish, has not been killed in order to create the caviar, however they are still needed to provide a small sample of cells. When taking our definition into consideration, the collection of cells from any animal would be considered as exploitative.”