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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CRISPR

AI Model Helps Research Team Create The World’s First Gene-Edited Giant Freshwater Prawn

This week, the a research partnership comprised of Watershed AC, Evogene, and Ben-Gurion University announced they have successfully produced the first gene-edited giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) using CRISPR technology. According to the announcement, this breakthrough represents the culmination of a year-long collaboration to enhance key crustacean traits, including growth rate, disease resistance, and environmental adaptation.

The partnership between the three entities, announced in October 2023, was initially backed by a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA). The project aimed to overcome the challenges of applying gene editing to non-model organisms with limited genomic data and protocols. The focus has been on species like giant freshwater prawn, white leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei), and red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii), which are crucial to the global aquaculture industry.

Computational biology startup Evogene said that it applied its GeneRator AI technology to the project to enable the precise design of guide RNAs (gRNAs), which were used to assist with gene editing. Evogene said that by predicting optimal gRNAs and accounting for un-annotated genomes and natural DNA variance, it increased the accuracy and efficiency of the CRISPR process.

Watershed AC, a sustainable aquaculture company, and BGU’s team, led by Prof. Amir Sagi, achieved the primary milestone of successfully editing the genome of the giant freshwater prawn. The key trait selected for modification was the prawn’s eye color, which was altered in the post-larvae stage, demonstrating the effectiveness of the gene-editing process.

With the successful creation of a gene-edited prawn, the IIA has green-lit funding for the second year of the collaboration, which will explore scaling up the CRISPR technology for industrial applications and expanding its use to other commercially valuable crustacean species like white-leg shrimp and red swamp crayfish.

Growing populations and increasing environmental concerns have increased the focus on developing more sustainable aquaculture solutions. Gene-editing can be used to improve key traits such as growth rate, disease resistance, and environmental adaptation in crustaceans. The global shrimp market, valued at $40.35 billion in 2023, is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.09% between 2024 and 2032. Similarly, according to industry reports, the crayfish market is expected to grow at a staggering CAGR of 31.5% during the same period.

Image credit:  Wikimedia Commons

Gene-Edited Food Startup Ohalo Emerges From Stealth as AgTech Pioneer Dave Friedberg Takes the Helm

This week, longtime food and ag tech founder and investor Dave Friedberg announced on Twitter that he has taken over the CEO role for gene-editing focused agtech startup Ohalo Genetics. Ohalo, operating under stealth for the past four years, began its life within Friedberg’s investment and startup incubator The Production Board.

From Friedberg’s tweet:

“@ohalo uses gene editing to completely reimagine agriculture, creating new plant varieties in major crops that were not previously feasible, significantly increasing yields and productivity, ultimately helping farmers make more food using far less land, resources, and capital. After recently achieving some major breakthroughs, I now believe @ohalo could become one of the world’s most important businesses and will be dedicating myself to realizing its potential.”

The move comes one decade after Friedberg sold his first agtech startup, The Climate Corporation, to Monsanto for $1.1 billion. The sale of The Climate Corp was a milestone for the broader ag tech space as it marked the first time an ag tech startup had sold for over a billion dollars.

As Friedberg takes over Ohalo, the company has begun to lift the veil of secrecy. The timing of the decision to come out of stealth (as well as Friedberg taking over) likely has something to do with Ohalo’s recent wins in the form of positive outcomes from the USDA’s Regulatory Status Reviews (RSRs) of the company’s work on gene-edited potatoes.

An RSR is a request sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to ask that the product, which in this case is a genetically modified plant in the form of a potato, not be regulated. Ohalo had two RSRs under consideration this year for its potato, one which focuses on higher concentrations of beta carotene – enhancing the overall health and nutrition value of the potato – and another which results in reduced glucose and fructose content in the potato, which, according to Ohalo, will reduce the adverse side effects that lead to significant spoilage during cold storage of potatoes.

In both cases, USDA’s APHIS agreed with Ohalo, essentially giving a green light for the product to move forward towards sale and consumption of the product within the U.S. without the additional oversight under 7 CFR part 340, the part of the Plant Protection Act of 2000 that gives the USDA regulatory oversight over genetically modified foods.

In the case of Ohalo’s approval (and other approvals under 7 CFR part 340), the USDA is saying that the alterations to the produce brought about using the gene-editing tools were possible through cultivation and that the risks posed by the changes were no more significant from a plant pest risk perspective than those introduced through traditional plant cultivation techniques.

Ohalo joins a cohort of gene-edited produce companies that have emerged in recent years as tools such as CRISPR Cas9 have matured and enabled breakthroughs in agriculture, healthcare, and pharma. While other ag-focused gene-editing startups such as Pairwise and Yield10 Bioscience have received significant funding over the past half-decade or so, the path towards commercialization has been slow for most and rocky for some. Benson Hill, an ag gene-editing startup with a billion-dollar valuation just two years ago, has started looking for strategic alternatives as it lays off staff.

As for the Production Board, where Friedberg has spent the majority of his time the past few years as he invested and spun up food and ag tech concepts around a variety of areas ranging from gene editing to bioreactors to beverage printing, he says he will continue to stay on some boards, while his team continues the investment work that he had been involved with on a day-to-day basis before the move.

“This is a big change for me personally, I haven’t been an operating CEO for 7+ years.. but the mind-blowing results the @ohalo team have accomplished make this decision a no-brainer,” said Friedberg.

CRISPR Specialist Pairwise Renews Partnership With Bayer to Focus on Gene-Edited Corn

Today, Pairwise announced a new five-year partnership with ag giant Bayer after touting milestones resulting from the two companies’ initial collaboration.

According to the gene-editing specialist, the initial partnership – which concluded in June of this year – had seen Pairwise help develop 27 novel traits that were transferred into Bayer’s testing programs. These included developing corn phenotypes with a 20 percent increase in kernel row numbers per ear and gene-edited soy that is more resistant to Asian soybean rust. According to Pairwise, both advances could increase yield and reduce the need for chemical inputs, such as fungicides.

The renewal of the partnership by Bayer is not only a ringing endorsement for Pairwise, but it also signifies the recognition by big ag companies of the need to leverage new tools like gene editing in the face of climate change.

The new companies’ collaboration will focus on optimizing and enhancing gene-edited short-stature corn for use in Bayer’s Preceon Smart Corn system. Short-stature has a targeted height of 30 to 40 percent less than traditional corn, which, according to Bayer, gives additional protection from crop loss due to the changes brought on by climate change, such as warming and extreme winds. Short-stature corn also enables more precise application of inputs during the growing system, resulting in reduced risk of crop loss.

“The shorter stature allows growers to optimize their operations and minimize risk, an ever-increasing concern in the face of climate-related events,” said Pairwise CEO Tom Adams.

In the announcement, Pairwise talks up the newly branded platform they are calling Fulcrum, in which the company essentially gives a brand name to the different gene-editing IP. According to Pairwise, the tools included in the Fulcrum platform include REDRAW, which the company describes as a precise templated editing toolbox that can make any type of small edit at CRISPR-targeted sites, and SHARC, a proprietary enzyme that “works well for cutting, base editing, and REDRAW editing, a combination that’s created a foundational, game-changing genome editing toolkit.”

EU Moves Towards Relaxing Rules Over Gene-Edited Food

According to a new document leaked by the Genetic Literacy Project, the European Union is moving towards relaxing its current regulations overseeing gene-edited food.

The draft regulation of the European Commission, the body responsible for drafting new regulations for the EU, recommends that food developed using tools such as CRISPR be approved as conventional rather than adhere to the laborious approval process dictated by the EU’s GMO regulations. According to the proposal, the EU would create a new category for plants developed using gene-editing techniques that could side-step the GMO categorization, provided that the new varieties could have been achieved using traditional breeding techniques.

Unlike genetic modification, which introduces genetic material from foreign species, gene-edited food introduces changes native to the species. According to the proposal, gene editing that introduces changes to the plant that goes beyond what would be possible through natural breeding techniques would require full GMO authorization.

The reasoning behind the shift is a growing recognition among European regulators of the need to embrace new science-forward techniques to deal with the increasing threat of climate change.

“The science and the evidence show that these can be achieved also through conventional breeding of crops,” an EU official told the Financial Times. “The economic rationale is very strong. If we want to cope with climate change and support food security we need these techniques.”

The new proposed legislation from the European Commission signifies an evolution of perspective around gene-edited food. In the past, the EU has viewed food developed using CRISPR and similar gene-editing technologies as essentially the same as genetically modified food (GMO), which meant they were subject to the same blanket moratorium from 2003 over any new approvals of GMO products.

While the move could potentially push the EU’s stance closer to United States’ more permissive regulatory environment for gene-edited food, the same forces which support GMO regulation and the initial ban on gene-editing – such as Greenpeace and some groups within the European parliament – plan to fight the proposal.

“The EU’s top court was clear that GMOs by another name are still GMOs,” Eve Corral of Greenpeace told the FT. “The EU must keep new GMOs regulated to make sure they pose no danger for nature, pollinators or human health.”

Pairwise Rolls Out First CRISPR-Edited Produce to U.S. Restaurants

Pairwise, a startup specializing in developing gene-edited produce, today announced the launch of its first product, a CRISPR-developed mustard green. The new product, the Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, will launch into the restaurant/food service channel in partnership with the food service specialist Performance Food Group.

The launch of gene-edited produce by Pairwise comes almost three years after the company got the sign-off from the USDA for its gene-edited mustard green. Mustard greens aren’t usually found on menus due to their pungent smell and bitter taste, but with changes engineered by CRISPR, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

While the Conscious Foods blend with Pairwise’s mustard greens will be the first publicly announced CRISPR-edited produce available in the US market, the product follows the launch of gene-edited tomatoes in Japan in late 2021. That product was produced by Sanatech Seed, which used CRISPR to increase the amount of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the tomatoes, a supplement that researchers claim can reduce blood pressure and improve moods.

The release of the Sanatech Seed tomatoes came roughly the same time gene-edited fish became commercially available in Japan. In late 2021, Kyoto-based Regional Fish Co., Ltd. started selling genome-edited “Madai” red sea bream and “22-seiki fugu” tiger puffer fish which were edited to grow bigger.

In the US, large ag conglomerates like Simplot have been working with CRISPR since 2018, developing the technology to reduce bruising and black spots in potatoes or extend the life of the strawberry. However, as of this point, Simplot and other firms working with the technology haven’t announced the public availability of their products.

Pairwise, which showcased its CRISPR-edited produce for one of the first times earlier this year at The Spoon’s CES food tech happy hour, plans to roll out its Conscious Foods product into grocery stores later in 2023

Pairwise Launches ‘Conscious Foods’ Brand to Bring Gene-Edited Leafy Greens to Market

Pairwise, a startup that specializes in developing gene-edited produce, has announced the launch of its consumer-facing brand called Conscious Foods.

The company’s first product sold under its new brand will be its gene-edited version of Brassica juncea, more commonly known as mustard greens. The company’s mustard green is a new take on a leafy green that has not been on many menus due to a pungent smell and bitter taste. With changes engineered by CRISPR, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

The company, which got approval from the USDA last August to move forward with commercializing its CRISPR-derived mustard green, plans to bring the first products to market in early 2023. The company plans to spend the bulk of the following year optimizing mixes, creating enough seed stock to provide to farmers, and also creating awareness for its new product throughout activation events.

Pairwise’s rollout of a new consumer-facing brand fits a now-familiar pattern in which a food tech platform company launches a new brand identity as it enters the commercialization stage. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen companies such as Perfect Day, MycoTechnologies, and others launch new brands that separate the final product identity a bit from the high-tech origins and try to sell the consumer on the benefits.

“Our idea is to create this brand that stands for who we are, which includes transparency,” Adams told me on a Zoom call. According to Adams, they will put information on the package that the food is produced by gene-editing and provide a way for interested consumers to get more information (such as a QR code on the package).

“We’re not going to hide from it, but we also really want to be selling the product based on the benefits rather than the technology. I know I buy products because of the benefits I get from them.”

The company has plans to release additional products beyond their first leafy greens and are currently working on developing pitless cherries and seedless blackberries. With the blackberries, the company is developing traits beyond just making them seedless that are helpful to the grower and picker.

“In the berry space, thorns present a real challenge to picking them,” Adams said. “So we’re removing them.”

Pairwise Raises $90M Series B for its CRISPR Food Tech

Pairwise, which uses CRISPR technology to enhance fruits and vegetables, announced today that it has raised a $90 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund (Pontifax AgTech) and existing investor Deerfield Management Company. Temasek and Leaps by Bayer also participated in the round, which brings Pairwise’s total funding to $115 million.

CRISPR is an exciting new field in food and ag tech. As Spoon Founder Mike Wolf wrote last year:

Food scientists around the world are using CRISPR tools to create food that is more disease resistant and tastes better, as well as utilizing the technology to save crops that might be at risk due to climate change.

Pairwise is using its CRISPR technology to improve five different types of produce, including mustard greens. Mustard greens are a high-yield crop with a strong nutritional profile, but their pungent smell and bitter taste prevents them from being a dinner plate staple. Pairwise aims to develop mustard green that gets rid off these not-so-great parts of the green so it too, can be an additional crop grown for consumption.

In addition to greens, Pairwise is working on improved berries and cherries. The applications of Pairwise’s technology go beyond eliminating bad odors and tastes. The company promises that CRISPR will allow it to also improve the shelf life, yield and seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables.

There are still regulatory hurdles to overcome for CRISPR-based foods. Unlike genetically modified foods, CRISPR is not introducing anything new into the genes of a plant (or meat). It is simply working with the material that is already present.

But still, it is uncharted territory. At the end of last year, the USDA sent out a proposed rule change that would have it oversee gene-edited animals instead of the FDA. So look for the regulations around CRISPR-based food to crystalize over the coming year.

Pairwise said its first product “is expected in 2022.”

Four Predictions for the Future of Food in 2021

It goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year for the food industry. A worldwide pandemic that wreaked havoc on food supply chains, forced the permanent closure of thousands of restaurants worldwide, and pushed millions of people deeper into food insecurity showed us just how fragile the systems that keep us nourished and fed are.

But it’s also the recognition of this fragility that’s led to an increasing sense of urgency to invest in the future of food. The good news is the timing couldn’t be better. We are at a culmination point in the fields of bioengineering, chemistry and food science where decades of hard work and progress have allowed ideas that once seemed the domain of science fiction to leap into the labs and, now and in the not-to-distant future, onto our plates.

And while 2020 was a year of unprecedented progress across our food system, I expect 2021 to be even more impactful. Below are four predictions for some of what we could see this year.

Cultured Meat Milestones Will Accelerate

Throughout 2020, announcements of milestones for cultured meat flowed with increasing regularity. New prototypes of practically every type of meat ranging from chicken to beef to kangaroo debuted, heads of state and other famous folks got their first tastes of lab-grown meat, and at the end Eat Just announced the first regulatory approval and retail sale of cultured chicken in Singapore.

And we’ll see even more milestones this year. Investment will grow and excitement will build as more companies move out of the labs and into early pilot production facilities for their cultured meat products. Other countries will follow Singapore’s lead and give regulatory green light for the sale of cultured meat. And finally, we’ll see the debut of more cultured meat products in high-end cuisine as chefs look to achieve similar firsts for their restaurants. We may even see the rollout of cultured meat in some select experiential, high-end retail.

Fermentation Powers Growth in Exciting New Consumer-Facing Products

One of the of most exciting areas in the future of food is microbial fermentation. High-volume production of interesting new biomass proteins such as mycelium-based meat replacements and the arrival of animal-free proteins, fats and other compounds created using precision fermentation helped illustrate why the Good Food Institute called fermentation the third leg of the alternative protein market.

Looking forward, you can expect lots of new products to debut powered by precision fermentation in 2021. MeliBio, a maker of bee-free honey, expects to debut their first product in 2021, while Clara Foods plans to release its animal-free egg this year as well, and I expect to see more companies like Brave Robot rise up and offer new products built around precision fermented food platforms created by companies like Perfect Day.

CRISPR and Gene-Edited Food See Accelerated Product Pipelines

There was big news in the CRISPR and gene-edited food realm in December when the USDA proposed a change in the regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals for human consumption. The organization proposed that they take over oversight responsibility for approving gene-edited animal products from the FDA which, in 2018, famously declared that gene-edited animals should be regulated in the same manner as drugs.

Under a new USDA regulatory framework, the organization is proposing a fairly light regulatory approach to animals compared to the previous oversight of the FDA, which in turn could speed up time to market for new products. While there has been lots of focus on CRISPR-derived future food innovation, I expect changes to US regulatory oversight of gene-edited animal products to create a wave of new interest in developing CRISPR-based product lines from both startups and established food product companies.

Finally, the US may not be the only market to see a change in oversight for gene-edited food. The UK is looking to extract itself from the heavier-handed oversight of the EU post-Brexit, and some in Europe are suggesting that the EU’s classification of all gene-edited food as GMO might be overbroad and need adjusting.

3D Food Printing Moves Beyond the Cake

While 3D food printing has largely been relegated to the world of confections and cake decorating, a world with food replicators from the pages of science fiction novels seems to be inching closer to reality.

Companies like Redefine Meat are making high-volume plant-based meat printers and plan to have meat in supermarkets in a year, while others like Meat-Tech are showing off prototypes of cultured meat printers. One of the challenges for food printing will be scaling the technology to make it quicker, something Novameat is working on as it begins to enter commercial rollout phase of its plant-based meat printing technology. On the consumer front, while I don’t expect the food printers to start printing out Jamie Oliver recipes this year, companies like Savoreat are working on commercializing products for the professional space with the end-goal of eventually creating a home consumer food printer like the one you might see in a show like Upload.

Finally, these advances and technologies do not happen in a vacuum. The future of food is reliant on a multitude of new innovations and technologies. CRISPR, precision fermentation and 3D food printing are just some of the tools being interwoven and utilized together to help bring innovative new products to cultured, plant-based and other emerging food markets.

While we don’t know what 2021 will hold for us with any certainty, what we can be certain of is that progress in these important building blocks for the future of food will continue to march forward.

CRISPR’d Cows: Proposed Rule Change By USDA Could Accelerate Gene-Edited Animal Production

CRISPR had quite a 2020. Not only did the cutting edge genetic engineering technique give us hope for better and faster COVID-19 tests and help advance new treatments for diseases like cancer, but its creators also received the world’s most prestigious award in science when they received the Nobel prize for chemistry for their pioneering work.

CRISPR’s also been marching forward in the food world. Pairwise, for example, made regulatory headway this year in advancing gene-edited produce in the form of a mustard green that actually tastes good and has a strong nutrition profile.

However, while we’ve seen some limited momentum when it comes to animals and CRISPR, such as making chickens more resistant to avian leukosis virus, regulatory approval for gene-edited animals has been slower ever since the FDA declared that molecularly manipulated animals needed to be regulated like drugs.

But that may soon change. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pushed out a proposed rule change suggesting that they take over the regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals from the FDA.

According to the proposed rule change, regulatory oversight of gene-edited animals for human consumption would be transitioned almost entirely to the USDA. From the release:

USDA would in most instances serve as a single point of entry for amenable species modified or developed using genetic engineering that are intended for agricultural purposes and would provide coordinated end-to-end regulatory oversight from pre-market animal pest and disease risk and human food safety reviews through post-market human food safety reviews for amenable species modified or developed using genetic engineering intended for use as human food.

First flagged by Wired, the news is an important potential development as the USDA – which has had oversight of CRISPR regulation for plant-based food – has taken a fairly laissez-faire approach relative to other US agencies. In 2018, the agency declared that CRISPR-edited crops would not require additional regulation.

With the proposed rule change, the USDA now wants to take an accelerated approach when it comes to gene-edited animals, a change that would also expand the scope to include oversight on whether the bio-engineered animals are safe for human consumption.

According to the proposed rule change, if the genetically modified animal was intended for human food consumption, the animal would undergo a risk-based and science-based review focused on food safety (in addition to animal health).

During this review, the proposed rules state that if the “USDA finds that the modification made using genetic engineering is equivalent to what can be accomplished through conventional breeding practices, the animal would not be subject to further regulation under the contemplated regulatory framework.”

If there were are resulting changes to the molecular structure of the animal outside of what would happen during traditional animal breeding – such as unintended DNA insertions – the agency would then notify the party responsible and a permit would be required to import, sell or release such an animal into a wider population.

The proposed rule change would cover pretty much all the same animal species the USDA currently regulates, from cattle and sheep to fish and poultry. The notice of proposed rule change is currently in the public comment period, which will last through February 26, 2021.

While the U.S. was the early leader in CRISPR-based intellectual property, China’s actually taken the lead when it comes to CRISPR-based agriculture innovation. This move by the U.S.’s primary food and agriculture regulatory agency to relax its oversight could help the country regain momentum as the world’s two largest economies continue to battle it out in this important future food battleground.

Mosa Meat's steak tartare on white plate with garnishes

Cultured meat takes sides on CRISPR

In 2017, a patent assigned to Memphis Meats detailed a way to overcome one of cultured meats biggest obstacles. The startup would use CRISPR gene editing to create a small mutation in their cells. The mutation would inactivate two proteins and ultimately increase “replicative capacity of the modified cell populations indefinitely.” They had transformed unpredictable cells with a limited capacity into hyper-proliferative ones  equipped for industrial production.

Longevity and predictability are the obstacles all cultured meat start-ups face in the effort to bring production to scale. Commercial scale cultured meat will require a mass production of cells like no other project to date, but cells in question aren’t inherently capable of that kind of output. After a certain number of replications, the fat, muscle and connective tissue cells max out. They  begin to die off or lose control. Left to itself, cultured meat eventually becomes self-contaminating. 

CRISPR gene editing offers a work around, a cheap and accurate way to equip stem cells for industrial capacity and consistency. Muscle and fat stem cells that naturally peter out can be edited to divide forever. Induced pluripotent stem cells that easily veer off course can be reprogrammed to exclusively produce muscle cells, fat or connective tissue. 

“Technologies like CRISPR allow us to safely increase the quality of our cell growth, which means we will make meat that is tastier, healthier, and more sustainable than slaughtered meat,” Brian Spears, the co-founder and CEO of New Age Meats, told Business Insider last year. Ostensibly, genetic tweaks made using CRISPR could make industrial cell culture faster to market, more predictable, and more cost effective.

But while some start-ups make CRISPR gene editing intrinsic to their process, others are intentionally separating themselves from the technology. They’re concerned that genetically altering their cell lines could lead to regulatory hang-ups — if not in the US or Asia, then in Europe. They’re calling their cultured meat non-GMO.

Whether CRISPR is a GMO has been hotly debated since the technology was first adapted for research from bacterial defense systems. Unlike genetically modified organisms, which have had foreign genetic material inserted into their DNA and been edited in a way that couldn’t occur naturally, CRISPR alters an organism’s own DNA to exhibit the most desirable traits. 

“Scientifically I buy that it’s not a GMO,” Paul Mozdziak, a cell biologist at North Carolina State told me via Zoom, “but regulation is often based on more than science.” Mozdziak is also an affiliate of Peace of Meat, a B2B cultured meat company that’s decided against CRISPR. “Our profile is we are not going to do anything that can be construed in any way shape or form as GMO,” Mozdziak said.  The same is true of Mosa Meat, a cultured meat elite who produced the first lab-grown burger in 2013. The decision is partly because Mosa is in the European market which doesn’t have a favorable attitude toward CRISPR at all, said Joshua Flack, cell biologist and leader of Mosa Meat’s Stemness & Isolation team. But “It also makes scientific sense. It is a lot of work to engineer your cell lines in this fashion.There’s a lot of ground work in the beginning if you’re using CRISPR and engineering.”

For those that don’t go the CRISPR route, the key is identifying the optimal cell line, finding out exactly what those cells want, and then catering the entire process to them, Flack said. The non-GMO approach is about optimizing the process while CRISPR offers a way to “turn the thing on its head” by genetically optimizing the cell line.  

From a scientific standpoint, no one is challenging CRISPR’s potential. Mozdziak called it a “promising technology” for the entire industry and even expects US regulatory bodies to be fairly amenable to the technology. Meanwhile, Mosa Meat has invested in inhouse explorations using CRISPR for R&D purposes. “We have to understand the risks of not employing these strategies,” Flack said. “The potential upside is really massive.”

CRISPR could very well be the fastest and cheapest way to commercial scale, but it’s unclear how much that will matter in the long run. Which process will be first to market or which will be stalled in regulations? These questions are just proxies for the one question that we can’t answer yet. That is, what will people buy–and buy enough to disrupt the meat industry? Maybe this new age GMO debate ends like the last one: both sides proceed so customers have the option. But one thing is for sure, Flack said,  “if you can’t sell it at the end, the effort is wasted.”

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article contained a quote from Daan Luining, CTO of Meatable. For administrative reasons, that quote has been replaced with a quote from Brian Spears, CEO of New Age Meats, originally published by Business Insider.

Pairwise Gets Greenlight from USDA for CRISPR-Engineered Mustard Greens

While health benefits of mustard greens have long been known, the strong bitter taste and pungent smell has kept this leafy green from going as mainstream as lettuce or kale.

But that could change soon. That’s because CRISPR-focused produce startup Pairwise got approval in mid-August from the USDA for their gene-edited version of Brassica juncea, more commonly known as mustard greens.

According to a release sent to The Spoon, the USDA sent confirmation to Pairwise in mid-August that the company was approved to move forward with their new take on a leafy green that has not been on many menu due to a pungent smell and bitter taste. With changes engineered by CRISPR technologies, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

Pairwise Greens in the field

According to Pairwise, their new mustard greens will feature a strong nutrition profile with supple leaves that hold up well to salad dressings and toppings and will have green and deep purple colors.

When I interviewed Pairwise CEO Tom Adams a month ago, he told me one of the reasons the company focused on mustard greens was the high yield of the crop.

Mustard greens “look just like lettuce, they they feel like lettuce, so if we could eliminate that flavor and make them taste like lettuce that they that they would be like lettuce,” said Adams. “It turns out they actually have another attribute, which is they yield on an acre basis. They yield about three times as much as kale.”

According to Pairwise, they currently have five varieties of the gene-edited produce in field trials. They have plans to expand the field trials in a few months to include the edited product and will provide sample products to partners this fall.

How CRISPR Could Create Produce That Lasts Longer, Tastes Better, and Won’t Make Pickers Bleed

Pairwise is one of the companies making a name for itself developing new types of products using CRISPR. The company is developing consumer-facing brands of produce that offer unique characteristics created through the use of CRISPR toolsets.

I caught up the CEO of Pairwise, Tom Adams, to discuss what the company is working on and to get his thoughts on how CRISPR will change the food system. Below are some excerpts from my interview. Spoon Plus subscribers can watch the interview and read the full, unedited transcript.

What are some examples of these types of CRISPR products with direct consumer benefits?

So a product that we’re interested in, sort of it’s a longer term product, is to create a cherry without a pit. You can imagine being able to just pop a cherry in your mouth and really enjoy that healthy, healthy fruit. Cherries are in season right now. They’re great, but I keep ending up with purple fingers from eating them all. I’d love to be able to just pop them over my mouth and eat them like grape. So that’s the kind of thing where we’re taking it down the barrier so that a consumer can really enjoy the cherry differently.

Now we’ll do other things that help with the overall production system. One of our ideas with cherries is to make it so you can produce cherries year round like we’ve done through 60 years of breeding with blueberries. We now have blueberries every day and I didn’t use to get blueberries every day but now I do.

How could CRISPR could accelerate the development of new forms of produce compared with traditional cross-breeding of crops?

There actually is a pitless plum that somebody isolated a few years ago. It’s not a good tasting plum, so it’s not a variety that sold. But you can cross plums and cherries, and you get chums or clerries or something. It’s not a cherry or a plum anymore. The Bing cherry was bred in 1880 and Bing cherry since then is a clone of that original tree. So if you cross them, that’s not a Bing cherry anymore.

You want to get back to the Bing cherry, you’d cross the chum back to the cherry probably 7 or 8 or 9 times until you get a little bit more cherry genome in it each time until you’re almost cherry again. That’s probably 150 years from now you’d have a pitless cherry. But with gene editing, I know what the mutation is that really resulted in the loss of the pits, so I can just go directly into the cherry and make that mutation. It’s the same endpoint that I would have gotten to through the breeding. It’s just 150 years faster.

One thing you’re working on is berries. Can you tell us more?

The blackberries I buy in the grocery store, I could take or leave. And that’s because they’re the variety that had some mutations in it that allow it to be more productive through the season. This mutation just happens to be in a variety that just doesn’t taste good. It’s very high acid. It’s not a really great berry. So we’re taking berries that taste like the ones in the Northwest and we’re putting in the same mutations that you’d see on the bad tasting ones that allow for higher productivity, and adding those to the really good tasting one. And then, just for good measure, we’re also going to get rid of the seeds. It turns out that 85% of people don’t really like the seeds in blackberries from our research. And it’s a fairly straightforward path to do that and then remove the thorns as well, so pickers aren’t bleeding.

What impact could CRISPR have on food in a decade?

10 years from now, what I’d like to picture is a lot of produce that not just that has gene editing in it, but is actually more approachable for people. We all grow up being told and taught that we should eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but only 9% of people in the United States eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. And given 5% are vegetarians, that doesn’t speak real well for the rest of us. So I want to see a variety of things that are more approachable for people.

You mentioned food waste. I think there’s an opportunity to make a substantial difference in shelf life. So when I go into a convenience store, it’s not a choice between a hot dog and a rotten banana. I can get a bowl of berries or something healthy like that as a snack and or pitless cherries. So that’s really our vision is to create a whole different marketplace of foods that fit people’s lifestyles. We eat a lot more food through snacking today than we did 50 years ago and we need to match our food up with that.

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