Artificial shrimps could change the world | Hacker News Reader

Artificial shrimps could change the world

economist.com

43 pointsshartshooter11 comments

Hey that’s neat! I’d love to see cleaner and more sustainably made “brewery crafted shrimp” than abusive and destructive industries that serve products grown on unclean conditions.

Article without paywall: https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/shrimps-p...

They may cost $5,000/kg today, but obviously if the product tastes good, the multi-billion-dollar market will rapidly provide capital for scaling out unit costs.

True only for things that can be scaled.

I don’t know what’s in this shrimp tissue culture medium but mammalian cell medium typically requires fetal calf serum.

You can’t arbitrarily scale production of that.

Somewhat related is the aquaculture company Natural Shrimp, Inc (SHMP) in Texas.

The claim to have improved water treatment methods that allow a much higher density of shrimp to be grown without disease killing them off.

I’ve been watching the company for about a year, and they are still squarely in the “show me” stage.

I've always felt that companies who prominently display their stock symbols on their homepages are a little suspicious - doubly so when they're on the OTC market like this one. They haven't reported a single dollar in revenue in any of their annual reports either [0], so either this is a scam or just a terrible business.

[0] https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/SHMP/financials

People on some message boards have driven to their location in El Paso and posted (outside) pictures. Also, the companies they announce partnerships with are real as well.

Right now my best guess is that it’s a combination of not being particularly well-run and a hobby/tax sink for the primary owners/investors.

Fortunately I can just watch from afar....

Wonderful, ask them if they can also do away with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyestalk_ablation ("in almost every marine shrimp maturation or reproduction facility in the world") or whether the denser conditions mean blinder shrimp.

That’s a good question.

According to their public documents, they plan to source shrimp larve from Sea Products Development, LLC, which is also located in Texas.

Nothing on the SPD site contains any direct information on this issue, other than generic SPG-speak.

Why did you mention the ticker?

tl;dr it's "artificial" in the sense that it's cultured animal tissue

> The process involves propagating shrimp cells in a nutrient-rich solution. Sriram likens it to a brewery, disdaining the phrase “lab-grown”.

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