Katsumi Kusumoto has become a celebrity chef in Japan for his awareness of the environmental pressures on food systems and his adaptation of menus to be less reliant on mass-produced animal protein.

Thinking outside the bento box got Chef Kusumoto to partner with a high-tech food company in Israel called Forsea.

“The Japanese consumed 160,000 metric tons of eel in 2000. Today, they consume only 30,000, and that’s because it’s just not available,” said Roee Nir, co-founder and CEO of Forsea.

Nir says most eel varieties are in short supply as endangered and protected species. Eels are also expensive because they are raised for several years before harvesting.

Earlier this year, The World staff visited Israel and saw what Forsea was working on.

“What we do is grow mini-tissues called organoids, and we basically mimic the natural development of cells,” Nir said. “Our tissue is a natural composition of fat, muscle and the actual extracellular matrix.”

The “extracellular matrix” is animal flesh, but developed in a stainless steel bioreactor.

“We’re not an eel company. We’re a cultivated meat company focused on fish and seafood, and our first product is the meat of the freshwater eel.”

Roee Nir, co-founder and CEO of Forsea

“We’re not an eel company,” said Nir. “We’re a cultivated meat company focused on fish and seafood, and our first product is the meat of the freshwater eel.”

In its current research and development phase, Forsea’s operations occur on one floor in a building in Rehovot, just outside Tel Aviv.

The eventual eel meat is developed right down the hall from Nir’s office.

Moria Shimoni, another of Forsea’s co-founders and chief technology officer, gave The World a tour of the area.

“This is where the magic happens,” said Shimoni before correcting herself. “Actually, all of the places … is where the magic happens: It starts with the cell isolation, it continues with the media development. This is actually the media. The media inside the bio-reactor is the media we developed.”

When Shimoni says “media,” she means the complex formula that feeds the eel cells that grow in the bioreactor.

In that sense, the magic really does happen in the bioreactors: stainless-steel tanks that mimic each cell line’s temperature, oxygen and nutritional needs as the team at Forsea trial-and-errors their way to something that tastes like unagi.

Nir said that cultivated meat grown in a lab has many benefits over conventional fish farming, but there’s one big thing: “The aquaculture that has been helping close the supply-demand gap for decades has been quite impactful for the environment,” he said. “And what’s expected to close the supply-demand gap of fish and seafood is cultivated meat.”

Cultivated meat also eliminates the need to grow animal-feed crops. As far as climate change emissions, various studies have shown that cultivated beef could improve the situation over real cows. However, other studies suggest that the infrastructure around cultivated beef could actually increase those emissions.

There are other benefits the cultivated eel industry is promoting, like a massive drop in microplastic pollution as a result of abandoning fishing nets.

But all of these positives depend on one big obstacle.

Faraz Harsini, a senior scientist at the Washington, DC-based Good Food Institute, who focuses on developing lab-grown meat, said, “With cultivated meat, the challenge is really to scale it up.”

Right now, the cultivated meat industry has proof of concept. But there’s a way to go still before you find cultivated eel in a cooler in the produce department.

Harsini said that better, more cost-effective bioreactors and cheaper media will be required to feed the cells.

But if that happens, Harsini will be optimistic about the benefits.

“This is something people don’t realize: The United Nations says that the top drivers of the next pandemic are due to increased demand for animal protein.”

Faraz Harsini, senior scientist at the Good Food Institute

“This is something people don’t realize: The United Nations says that the top drivers of the next pandemic are due to increased demand for animal protein,” he said.

In other words, as the production of conventional chicken, pork and beef is increasingly industrialized to feed the world’s growing population, the probability of another outbreak of some disease — avian flu, swine flu or COVID-19 — will increase.

Cultivated meat lowers that risk.

“Because it’s a process that is completely under control, you are constantly sampling and testing for any microbes and contamination, and if you have contamination, you just waste a batch,” Harsini said.

Farmers pump their livestock with antibiotics to prevent infections and to make them grow faster. Cultivated meat also eliminates the need for antibiotics.

And Harsini, like many scientists, is deeply concerned about where continued reliance on antibiotics in the current food system will take the planet.

“According to WHO’s former director, it’s going to be the end of modern medicine when we have [an] antibiotic-resistant pandemic,” he said. “Again, that’s a problem completely mitigated with cultivated meat.”

Israel has become an incubator for companies on the cutting edge of cultivated meat. Just down the road from Forsea is Aleph Farms, which is working on cultivated beef.

No fewer than half a dozen cultivated meat operations are scattered around the country.

Tami Tvash, vice president for research and development at Aleph Farms, showed The World several new creations, including what can only be described as “beef ink,” a combination of muscle and fat cells designed to smell and even sound like steak when it’s on a hot skillet.

“And with this ink,” Tvash said, “we’re actually printing a steak, so we can print areas with muscle cells, we can do areas with fat components in a steak.”

Aleph Farms is working on a minute-steak, and once that gets scaled up, thicker cuts of meat will follow.

Why is this all happening in Israel?

Faraz Harsini of the Good Food Institute, which has an affiliate office there, says the Israeli government has actively supported food innovation because “Israel relies heavily on importing meat, and so for them, it’s a matter of national security.”

It likely should be one for the rest of the world, too.

This work is something Nir at Forsea is excited to do every day.

“How many industries do you know that are targeting two of the world’s biggest problems: nutrition and climate?” he said.

Nir expects Forsea’s first product will reach the market late next year or early 2026.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified a last name. The original version had Faraz Farsini, but the correct name is Faraz Harsini, which has been updated to reflect this.

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