The Times - UK (2022-04-13)

the times | Wednesday April 13 2022 2GM 3

News

Caviar has been an expensive delicacy
reserved for the wealthy because some
sturgeon species take 14 years to reach
egg-laying maturity.
A British company is now creating
the world’s first lab-grown caviar,
avoiding the need for fish altogether
and making it accessible to all.
Ken Benning, founder of Caviar Bio-
tec, has worked with a biochemical en-
gineering professor from University
College London to grow sturgeon egg
cells in a lab in 40 days.
The company has received a report
from the UK Intellectual Property
Office indicating that key aspects of its
cell-grown caviar technology are novel,

eight to ten Ecstasy tablets, she said

after walking over to address the jury, as

Depp sat a yard away, frowning at her.

“The next three days are just a cycle of

very, very violent activity by him,” she

said. “Some pretty horrendous things

happened to her [Heard]. He rips off her

nightgown, he has her jammed up

against a bar, he has hurled bottles and

bottles at her, he has dragged her across

the floor on the broken bottles and the

liquor, he has punched her, he has kick-

ed her, he tells her he’s going to f***ing

kill her, he f***ing hates her.”

Bredehof said Depp had then been

sexually violent. Depp gave a slight

shake of the head.

Bredehoft told the jury: “This is the

story of a very different Johnny Depp...

he has an enormous amount of rage.

There will be testimony... where he

admits he has rage, he’s like a demon

and he views his wife, Amber, like his

mother and his sister, who he hates. It is

fuelled by alcohol and the drugs.”

Chew said the violence was invented

after Heard threatened to make claims

of abuse “if he didn’t agree to her finan-

cial claims” in the divorce. Heard was

photographed with a bruised face in

May 2016 six days after Depp had left for

Europe, he said. Witnesses who saw her

when he left would testify that she had

no marks on her face, he added.

According to Chew, it was Heard who

pursued Depp after they met on the set

of The Rum Diary. Chew said photos

showing bruising on Heard’s face were

“not originals” and were “stored on an

editing program”. It was Depp who

faced aggression from Heard, he said.

Bredehoft produced a silver make-up

case and told the jury that Heard carried

it at all times while married to Depp to

cover up marks on her face, including

black eyes when he headbutted her.

He was the one who pursued her, she

said, sending her a guitar as a gift even

though both were with other partners

when they first acted together.

The trial is expected to last six weeks.

Depp lost a high-profile libel case in

London two years ago against the

publisher of The Sun for calling him a

“wife beater”.

A High Court judge ruled that he had

repeatedly assaulted Heard and put her

in fear for her life.

Among a dozen dedicated Depp fans

who started queueing at 4am outside

the court building, Jacintya Gillespie, 52,

said she had travelled from Brisbane,

Australia, to support him.

Amber Heard always carried a silver make-up case while married to Depp to cover up marks on her face, the jury was told

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AP

Test-tube pioneer spawns idea of caviar for the masses

bringing it a step closer to taking on the

fish-farming industry.

Benning, who opened England’s first

caviar farm on Exmoor in 2013, said the

technology could allow his company to

produce more caviar than the entire

annual global supply in a room of less

than 300 square metres.

“Cell-culture caviar didn’t happen

before us,” Benning said. “We have the

exact same cell that turns into caviar,

and we are growing that in a liquid

instead of inside a fish. There are no

antibiotics; no killing of fish. It’s as

simple as that. We have filed the IP on

it, so we are confident we have tied

down the market.”

Caviar was historically centred on

wild sturgeon stocks in the Caspian Sea.

By 2006 severe overfishing led to a ban

on the global sale of almost all wild cavi-

ar and a big growth in the farming of

sturgeon, an industry valued at

£640 million in 2019.

The female Siberian sturgeon, the

main species farmed at Exmoor, takes

four to five years to reach sexual matur-

ity, whereas white stur-

geon do not lay eggs

until they are 14

years old. Once

the fish have

built up a mass of

unfertilised eggs,

which in the wild

they would release in

their breeding grounds,

producers can either kill them and har-

vest the eggs and meat, or inject hor-

mones into the living fish to make them

release the eggs.

Benning sees hormone-induced har-

vesting as harmful to the fish and detri-

mental to the quality of the eggs, and so

his Exmoor farm kills the fish for their

eggs. However, he believes it will be-

come increasingly “socially un-

acceptable” to eat harvested

caviar and consumers will

find cell-cultured food

more appealing.

“Cell-grown cav-

iar will be a lot cheap-

er to produce, and we

are eyeing up airlines and

cruise lines and definitely

corporate social responsi-

bility,” he said. “We are confident that

five years down the line the mentality

around the cellular agriculture culture

space will be very different from what it

is now.

“Where we are eventually headed is

‘cell roe’, where we can do this with any

fish eggs.”

Critics of sturgeon farms, such as

People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals, argue that farming any fish is

cruel, as it keeps them in an artificially

confined space, and slaughtering stur-

geon for their eggs is barbaric.

The caviar industry says that

sturgeon meat is also sold for eating,

that farmed stocks can bolster critically

endangered wild numbers and that the

welfare of the fish has to be their main

concern.

Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent

Some sturgeon species take 14 years

before females start producing eggs

He was one of the most talented actors
in Hollywood, but behind the scenes
Johnny Depp was a violent, drug-
fuelled “monster” who sexually abused
his wife, Amber Heard, a US court was
told yesterday.
Graphic descriptions of the actor
attacking Heard with his fists, a mobile
phone and a bottle were outlined by her
lawyers to a jury during sharply con-
trasting opening statements in Depp’s
$50 million defamation case against her.
Depp’s legal team said his friends
knew him as “a kind soul who has never
and would never raise a hand to a
woman” and that Heard was a compul-
sive liar acting in “the role of her life” to
devastate his career.
The couple met in 2011, married in
2015 and separated the next year.
The trigger for the case was an
article by Heard in The Washing-
ton Post in 2018 referring to
herself as a “public figure
representing domestic
abuse”, which Depp, 58,
claims was intended to dam-
age his reputation. Heard, 35,
who did not mention
Depp by name in
the article, is
countersuing for
$100 million over
being called a
hoaxer by a law-
yer acting for
Depp.
The two pro-
tagonists sat
on opposite
sides of the

Heard comes

face to face

with Depp

for round two

court, Heard in a black shirt and light

grey trouser suit with a team of four law-

yers, Depp in a black shirt, dark grey

three-piece suit and white tie. He was

with six lawyers.

“For nearly 30 years Mr Depp built a

reputation as one of the most talented

actors in Hollywood,” Benjamin Chew,

for Depp, told the seven-member jury

sitting with four “alternates”, or backup

jurors. Depp starred in cult classics in-

cluding John Waters’s Cry-Baby and

Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands

before becoming a household name as

Jack Sparrow in Disney’s Pirates of the

Caribbean films.

“Today his name is associated with a

lie, a false statement uttered by his

former wife, the defendant, Amber

Heard,” Chew said.

“And when, like Mr Depp, your career

depends upon your image and your rep-

utation, or whether movie producers

want their films associated with you,

that harm can be particularly devastat-

ing. Hollywood studios don’t want to

deal with the public backlash from hir-

ing someone accused of abuse. A false

allegation can devastate a career.”

Some of the most sordid

claims relate to three days in

2015 when Depp went on a

drug binge in Australia

while filming the fifth

Pirates of the Caribbean

film, Elaine Bredehoft,

for Heard, said.

“The monster would

come out when he

was drinking

and when he

would take the

drugs,” she

claimed.

Depp took

The former Hollywood

couple have begun a

$100m court fight over

claims of lies and abuse,

writes David Charter

Johnny

Depp is

seeking

damages of

$50 million