Retire the fish: inside the world’s first no-kill caviar farm

‘We’ve just started taking our first eggs,’ says John Addey, who along with son Mark wanted to build something around the idea of helping conserve sturgeon. Naturally, a caviar farm was the solution. ‘Traditionally, in the spring the eggs are fully mature, ready for stripping. At that point they will kill the fish, cut it open, and take the eggs from the ovaries. Sometimes people cut the fish open, collect the eggs, then stitch them back up again. But the fish die anyway. We’re more in control of the process here. Eggs aren’t pulled from the ovary – they’re released by the fish.’

In order to keep the fish in an environment they’re comfortable with to regularly produce eggs, John and his team need to fine-tune the ambient nature of the farm to match the sturgeon’s native habitat. This involves emulating the seasons, from changing the amount of light the sturgeon receive each day, to the temperature of their water.

The fact many wild sturgeon die before the end of their natural lifespan – and 'no-kill' sturgeon farming is at the moment somewhat novel – means John is encountering a host of unknowns with this new undertaking. I ask him when he expects his sturgeon to stop producing eggs. ‘We don’t know that. We’re presuming, because no one’s done tests on it – all fish have been killed for their eggs.’

The same goes for taste. ‘There may well be some difference, but we don’t know yet. As the fish get older, it could be that the eggs get larger. Each fish could have a different taste.’ Texturally at least, John’s caviar will be ever so slightly different. As opposed to roe forced out of the fish, the eggs will be much softer, and so will need to be pasteurised and stabilised with added preservatives before they can be consumed. ‘It doesn’t add anything to the taste,’ assures John.

Seeing as John and Mark’s initial aim was to help conserve sturgeon, at some point in the future they’ve got to worry about what to do with the fish once they stop producing roe. ‘When we retire them, we can either build a lake somewhere in the UK purely for retirement fish, or send them to designated protected areas for sturgeon in places like Hungary and Bulgaria,’ says John. ‘There’s the World Sturgeon [Conservation] Society also trying to reinstate sturgeon into certain areas.’

You might be wondering if it takes away anything from the eventual cost to you. Then again, you have to remember John’s trying to run a farm, not a sanctuary. ‘We’ve specifically set the price to the average for the UK. People have said if you’re not killing the fish it should be cheaper. But we’re looking after the fish and certainly giving them a five-star treatment, which they wouldn’t get in the wild.’ KC’s caviar starts at £100, which is about the same price as the cheapest 30g tin from Fortnum’s.

Of course, there are other sides to the argument. Exmoor Caviar in Devon has been producing roe for the past three years using traditional methods, supplying Michelin-starred restaurants wanting the finest caviar but with a more local appeal. 'Traditional methods of processing for us will always be better, at least with the technology as it is,' says managing director Harry Ferguson. 'Milking or stripping in our opinion and on the advice of the some of the leading fish veterinarians in Europe does more damage to the fish than humane slaughter. Also, the final product is completely different and no-kill farms do not tell of the vast chemicals used to restructure the roe, which when dropped naturally by the sturgeon is ready to be fertilised and inedible in terms of what people expect from caviar.'

So while buyers might not be any less out of pocket, they do now have a choice on how their caviar is harvested. What’s more, it means vegetarians can, perhaps for the first time, experience caviar – John says he will have chefs among his clientele, but the eventual product will be geared towards the uninitiated. ‘We’ll be supplying restaurants,’ says John. ‘But it will be sold I think to people who’ve not tried it before.’