Fishing for Solutions: Nomenclature of Cell-Cultivated Fish Products
Abstract In recent decades, marine resources have faced extreme environmental pressures due to growing global fish consumption. Both commercial fishing and aquaculture harm the environment, threaten public health, and entail morally dubious practices. While consumers have increasingly become aware of the implications of the global fishing industry, most still want to eat seafood. Recent advancements in food technology have resulted in the successful production of cell-cultivated fish. Grown from real fish cells, cell-cultivated seafood avoids many of the issues associated with conventional fish production. Although cell-cultivated seafood will soon be available to consumers, there is not yet consensus on a ‘common or usual name’, a requirement of the US Food and Drug Administration for novel foods. We present a public discourse analysis, and the results of two online US-based surveys (n=2,452 and n=1,839) analyzing consumer acceptance and understanding of key terms used to describe cultured fish. Adult participants were tested for knowledge and acceptability of multiple descriptive terms: Bio-crafted, Bio-Cultivated, Cell-based, Cultivated, Cultured, Molecular, and the coined term ‘Novari’. The Control was a description of the product coupled with realistic packaging a consumer may expect to find once the product is available for purchase. The discourse analysis indicated that there is no current consensus on terminology used to describe cell-cultivated meat, and that some of the most commonly-used terms currently tend to be used in a negative context. Our Phase I survey revealed that names such as ‘cell-based’ and ‘bio-crafted’ were more likely to be understood, but relatively unappealing, while names such as ‘cultivated’ and ‘Novari’ were more appealing, but less likely to be understood. Our Phase II survey further revealed that the term ‘cell-cultivated’ combined promising elements of these terms, and was subsequently more appealing than ‘cell-based’ and better-understood than both ‘cultivated’ and ‘cell-based’. That said, none of the names tested outperformed the control group in consumer ability to identify the product accurately
