Intellectual Property Model of Food Maintains Harmful Reliance on GMO Grains, Detracts from Regenerative Agriculture, Hastens Soil Loss
By Seth Itzkhan, Soil4Climate Inc.
Impossible Foods should really be called Impossible Patents. It’s not food; it’s software, intellectual property — 14 patents, in fact, in each bite of Impossible Burger with over 100 additional patents pending for animal proxies from chicken to fish. It’s iFood, the next killer app. Just download your flavour. This is likely the appeal for Bill Gates, their über investor. It’s a food operating system (FOS), a predecessor, perhaps, to a merger with Microsoft. MS-FOOD. The business model is already etched in Silicon Valley — license core technology (protein synthesis) while seeking vertical integration of supply chains, which, in this case, is not from coders to users, but from genetic engineers to protein seekers.
Will Impossible Foods stand against healthy soils legislation? That will reveal what their appetite is for.
In this software-as-food scenario, there is no place for nature. Manufacturing of Impossible Burger starts with glyphosate-sprayed soy grown on what was once healthy prairie. It is then infused with heme molecules produced by patented yeast in high-tech labs for the blood-like upgrade. Finally, it ends its journey as a plastic-wrapped puck that some are brave enough to ingest. Just fry with canola oil and the illusion of a meal is complete. As Pat Brown, Impossible Foods founder and CEO openly states, animals are just a “technology” that consumers simply had to “live with.”
“…animals have just been the technology we have used up until now to produce meat… What consumers value about meat has nothing to do with how it’s made. They just live with the fact that it’s made from animals.” – Pat Brown, Impossible Foods CEO
The pretence that this wealth-concentrating march of the software industry into the food sector is in any way good for people or the environment is predicated on a comparison with only the worst aspects of animal agriculture. It ignores, entirely, the rapidly growing regenerative movement that is offering so much hope for the planet at this key time, healing landscapes, replenishing aquifers, and mitigating fires. Thus, because of its reliance on grains, tillage, pesticides and fertilizers, fake meat of scale exacerbates depletion of grasslands while undermining a more legitimate solution. As soon as there is a price on soil carbon, however, this misdirection becomes evident. Will Impossible Foods stand against healthy soils legislation? That will reveal what their appetite is for.
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Patents Assigned to Impossible Foods Inc.:
- Patent number: 10287568 – Methods for extracting and purifying non-denatured proteins
- Patent number: 10273492 – Expression constructs and methods of genetically engineering methylotrophic yeast
- Patent number: 10172380 – Ground meat replicas
- Patent number: 10172381 – Methods and compositions for consumables
- Patent number: 10093913 – Methods for extracting and purifying non-denatured proteins
- Patent number: 10039306 – Methods and compositions for consumables
- Patent 10087434 – Methods for extracting and purifying non-denatured proteins
- Patent number: 9943096 – Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables
- Patent number: 9938327 – Expression constructs and methods of genetically engineering methylotrophic yeast
- Patent number: 9833768 – Affinity reagents for protein purification
- Patent number: 9826772 – Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables
- Patent number: 9808029 – Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables
- Patent number: 9737875 – Affinity reagents for protein purification
- Patent number: 9700067 – Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables
- Patent number: 9011949 – Methods and compositions for consumables
Resources:
- Patents Assigned to Impossible Foods Inc.
- Patrick O. Brown
- Interview with David Lee, Impossible Foods
- Impossible Foods Closes a $75 Million Investment After Achieving Key Milestones
- Not Impossible Valuations: Impossible Foods Has All the Buzz (And Market Cap)
- 6 Reasons Impossible Burger’s CEO Is Wrong About GMO Soy
Original opinion was provided in the Soil4Climate Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Soil4Climate/permalink/2702432830028454/
