BlueNalu: Feeding the World With Cellular Aquaculture

4 min readMay 29, 2020

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador and founder of Bioquark, interviews Lou Cooperhouse, MS, President and CEO of BlueNalu.

Ira Pastor comments:

Global demand for seafood is at an all time high, as consumers are increasingly choosing to eat an extraordinary variety of seafood products that exist worldwide. Unfortunately, our global supply for seafood cannot keep pace with this demand, as populations of marine species have halved since 1970. This is due to overfishing, illegal fishing, rising ocean temperatures, acidification, the effects of trawling, and a number of other environmental, social, and political challenges.

At the same time, consumers are looking for more from their food choices. Consumers are increasingly concerned about animal welfare and the conditions in which fish are farmed and caught. In addition, they are increasingly concerned about their own personal welfare, as seafood can be a source of mercury, toxins and poisons, pathogens, viruses, and parasites, micro-particles of plastics due to plastic pollution in our ocean, and a variety of other environmental pollutants.

Using Biotechnology to Create a Sustainable Food Resource

*BlueNalu’s whole-muscle, cell-based yellowtail, Photo Credit: BlueNalu*

Cellular agriculture (or aquaculture per our theme today) focuses on the production of products from cell cultures using a combination of biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology to create and design new methods of producing proteins, fats, and tissues that would otherwise come from traditional agriculture or aquaculture.

Lou Cooperhouse, is President and CEO of BlueNalu, a company whose mission is to be the global leader in cellular aquaculture, providing consumers with great tasting, healthy, safe and trusted cell-based seafood products that support the sustainability and diversity of our ocean.

Lou Cooperhouse

With degrees in Food Science and Microbiology, both from Rutgers University, Mr. Cooperhouse is recognized as a leading global authority in food business innovation and technology commercialization, with extensive leadership experiences throughout his 35-year career in the food industry.

Most recently, Mr. Cooperhouse served as CEO of Food Spectrum, LLC, where he provided a broad array of strategic consulting and business management expertise to the food industry, as well as a founder and the Executive Director of the Rutgers University Food Innovation Center (FIC), and led this program for approximately 15 years.

Previously, Mr. Cooperhouse served as President & COO of F&S Produce, a leading regional supplier of fresh-cut produce and value-added refrigerated foods, and Co-Founder, President and CEO of MenuDirect Corporation, a unique health, wellness, and nutrition company, which provided meal solutions for individuals with celiac disease, diabetes, PKU and dysphagia.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Cooperhouse held positions of increasing responsibility at Campbell’s Soup, ConAgra, Nestlé-funded Culinary Brands, Idle Wild Farms, and Grand Union Supermarkets in areas of business development, product development, quality assurance, and operations.

In addition, Mr. Cooperhouse has considerable expertise in food safety and quality assurance systems, and has provided leadership at numerous FDA and USDA-inspected operations, and has conducted third-party audits of dozens of food companies throughout the nation. He is Certified in Preventive Controls for Human Food (issued by the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance), is a Certified Trainer in Hazard analysis and critical control points (issued by the International HACCP Alliance), and is also Certified as a ServSafe Food Protection Manager (issued by the American National Standards Institute).

On this episode we will hear from Mr. Cooperhouse:

About his background in the food science, safety and technology space. About the BlueNalu company. About the processes involved in creating lab grown fish meats. About the types of fish meats they are planning on commercializing first. About any technology hurdles on the route to market. About regulations surrounding cell based aquaculture and about any “Exotic” marine food requests from customers.

This interview is in American English