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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future Food

Forager Partners With Roche Bros. To Make Local Food More Accessible

Forager, a procurement platform for sourcing local food, announced its partnership with Massachusetts-based Roche Bros. grocery store this week. Over 20 Roche Bros. and its subsidiaries in the Boston Metro area will be implementing Forager’s platform.

Forager forms relationships with local farmers, ranchers, fishers, and artisanal producers, and then streamlines the process of getting their products into stores. Local producers can update their inventory on a phone, and buyers from grocery stores can instantly see the price and amount of these items. Through the Forager program, local food and products go straight from the farm to the grocery store, rather than to a warehouse before heading off to the grocery store.

I spoke with Forager Founder, David Stone, this week about this recent partnership and Forager’s mission. Stone said that his company prefers focusing on partnering with smaller, independent grocery stores over the big players in the grocery game like Walmart or Amazon. By connecting smaller grocery stores with more local producers, this gives smaller stores a chance to compete with larger retailers and providers by attracting consumers that are specifically looking for local produce.

The demand for local produce surged at the beginning of the pandemic, and although it is unclear if this trend is still on an upward trajectory, companies have responded to it. Besides Forager, other companies have made an effort to connect consumers to local goods. Grubmarket raised $20 million in funding earlier this month for its virtual farmer’s market platform. This summer, Chipotle also launched a virtual farmer’s market so consumers can have access to local cheese, meat, and produce from its suppliers.

The Forager platform is currently being used in about 30 grocery stores in nine different states. The company is in discussion with about 10 other grocery stores for new potential partnerships.

Deep Branch Secures €2.5M to Scale Up Production of Novel Protein Using CO2 Inputs

Alternative protein company Deep Branch has secured €2.5 million (~$2.9 million USD) in new funding from the European Investment Council (EIC) Accelerator to scale up production of the company’s novel, single-cell protein called Proton. The funding will be used to build a production facility in the Netherlands that the company hopes will be operational by Q2 of next year, according to a release sent to The Spoon.

The announcement comes just months after Deep Branch secured government funding from the UK through an organization called the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), which funded nine projects to the tune of $30 million to help advance zero-emission farming and greater food sovereignty within the UK.

One of those projects is REACT-FIRST, which is a consortium centered around Deep Branch’s technology that creates protein using CO2 inputs from industrial emissions. Deep Branch, which has developed an animal feed formula using its novel single-cell protein that has a nutritional profile similar to that of fishmeal, was working with nine other partners as part of REACT-FIRST to create a sustainable protein research and production value chain.

With today’s news, Deep Branch is expanding to mainland Europe as part of an effort to accelerate the scaling of production for the company’s novel protein. The new funding will help the company build out a production facility at the Netherlands-based Brightlands Chemelot Campus, a European hub focused on providing space and infrastructure for circular chemistry and chemical processes. The new facility will, according to the release, “enable Deep Branch to scale up increasing production to enable animal feed manufacturers to expedite performance testing of the new protein.”

“Brightlands Chemelot Campus is the ideal location for our Scale-Up Centre, and there is a clear alignment between our goals and the facility’s overall ambitions for CO2 recycling and sustainable hydrogen use,”said Deep Branch CEO Peter Rowe in the release. “The industrial site gives us the ability to scale up quickly and has room for a large-scale production facility as well as the raw materials to create Proton. We have access to everything we need.”

Deep Branch will be working with feed producers BioMar and AB Agri as part of the scale up and optimization.

“Setting up the pilot plant represents an important next step in finding the perfect recipe for Proton that meets the requirements of feed producers,” said Rowe.

Deep Branch is one of a small cohort of new startups that have launched over the past few years focused on developing protein using a process called gas fermentation. (Check out Spoon Plus report on the topic here.) Others include Air Protein, Solar Foods and NovoNutrients. Last year, the European Space Agency started working with Solar Foods to develop the technology for use in space to feed astronauts.

Food Tech News: Fried Chicken-Scented Face Masks, Halloween Robot Delivers Candy

Hormel and Jack in the Box give away scented masks

If you love the smell of chicken and bacon, now you have the option to inhale these scents all day. To promote new product launches, Hormel and Jack in the Box are giving away free scented face masks. Jack in the Box will soon launch a new plant-based UnChicken Sandwich and is giving out free fried chicken-scented face masks to celebrate. To promote the launch of its Black Label Bacon, Hormel is giving away “breathable bacon” face masks.

Photo from PR Newswire

Reece’s to deliver candy bars through robotic door

This year’s Halloween will likely be sans trick-or-treating, but Reese’s brand came up with a festive solution to distribute its peanut butter chocolate cups despite the circumstances. The brand created a robot door that travels through neighborhoods via remote control, and will release smoke and play a Halloween soundtrack. To receive a king-size Reese’s peanut butter cup from the door, one must simply approach the robot and say “trick-or-treat”. To determine where the robot door will stop this Halloween season, you can pitch your request on Reese’s Instagram page.

$30K food and agribusiness prize for MIT and RaboBank competition

MIT and Rabobank are hosting IGNITE, a virtual kick-off on November 9th for its food and agribusiness competition. The 6th annual Rabobank-MIT Food & Agribusiness competition aims to support student innovators in the food tech and agriculture space based in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Winners of the competition will receive $30K USD, access to industry mentorship, and other resources. The kickoff event is free to sign-up for, and the applications for the competition are due in January.

Prime Roots launches plant-based meats and meals at Whole Foods

Producers of vegan, koji-based meat products, Prime Roots will be debuting its meat alternative products and prepared meals in Whole Foods next week. Koji is a type of fungus that gives Prime Root’s chicken, bacon, and beef a meaty texture and umami flavor. Some of the company’s plant-based prepared meals include bacon mac and cheese, Hawaiian shoyu chicken, and beef shepherd’s pie. The company’s products will be available starting on October 27th in Bay Area Whole Foods.

IXON Food Technology Claims to Keeps Meat Fresh For Two Years

This week, Hong Kong-based IXON Food Technology announced its proprietary method of food preservation that allows meat to be shelf-stable for a guaranteed minimum of two years. The company will use this technology to produce packaged sirloin steaks and pork chops.

The company’s preservation technology is called “ASAP”, which stands for advanced sous-vide aseptic packaging. Other methods of preservation, like canning, for example, put food through high heat for sterilization. In this process, some of the flavors of the food get lost. IXON’s technology sterilizes food at a moderate temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which allows the food to keep both flavor and moisture. This process also excludes preservatives and chemicals which are commonly found in other preserved and packaged foods.

The company explains its technology in this video:

Advanced sous-vide aseptic packaging (ASAP) - How does it work?

If the company’s technology works as advertised that would also mean that meat could be stored and shipped without energy-consuming freezers, and that people could stock up on meats without filling up their fridges and freezers at home.

All of that sounds great, but what we don’t know is how well this technology actually works, and what types of independent verification has been done. Also unknown is what type of company IXON is. Is it looking to license out its technology to other meat providers, or is it building its own meat brand?

IXON Food Technologies joins other companies in the quests to preserve foods and combat food waste. Apeel, producers of a natural food-safe coating that extends the life of produce, raised $250 million earlier this year. And StixFresh created a sticker that is placed on produce to extend its shelf life. IXON Food Technologies appears the be the only company focusing on meat specifically but stated on their website that they plan on expanding to include additional food products in the future.

With a month left to go, Ixon Food Technology’s Kickstarter campaign has raised nearly $36,000, blowing past its goal of roughly $13,000. Early backers can actually receive two 16-oz beef sirloin steaks or pork chops for a pledge of $49 USD. The company is currently applying for patents and trademarks for its technology in the United States, Europe, and China.

Impossible Is Prototyping a Plant-Based Milk Product

At a press conference today, Impossible Foods revealed a prototype for a plant-based milk alternative as part of its ambitious plans to eliminate animal protein from the food supply chain. The product will be called Impossible Milk and will look and function just like cow’s milk. 

To illustrate the differences, Impossible showed its prototype off alongside other alternative milks at the press conference, even mixing it with a cup of coffee to demonstrate how it does not curdle as other plant-based milks do.

Though the milk won’t be available to customers at any point in the near future, It is part of Impossible’s plan to diversify its products to include a range of plant-based alternative proteins. The company is also working on alternatives to chicken and steak, and CEO Pat Brown told MIT Technology Review that Impossible is on a mission to “completely replace the world’s most destructive technology by far, which is the use of animals, by 2035.”

“We will succeed or fail based on whether we build a complete technology platform that creates all the foods we get today from animals,” he added.

To help realize that lofty goal, Impossible also said at the press conference that it intends to double the size of its R&D team over the next year and launched the “Impossible Investigator” project to entice scientists to join the team.

Today’s news follows Impossible’s just-announced expansion onto retail store shelves in Hong Kong and Singapore. And overall, 2020 has been a busy year for the company. It raised another $200 million in August, expanded distribution of its products to Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and other food retailers, and launched a direct-to-consumer e-commerce store. 

The company’s ambitions to branch out from faux beef into dairy, fish, poultry, and other areas of alt protein comes as the entire sector is seeing enormous growth and investment. Impossible’s chief rival Beyond hasn’t exactly rested on its laurels this year, either, having also expanded its product line, launched its own D2C store, and launched products at retail stores in China.

One area we won’t see Impossible branch into, at least for now: cell-based meat. Pat Brown didn’t waffle about at SKS last week when he said the idea of commercially produced meat from a lab was never going to happen. Of course, the company could always change its stance. For now, though, expect Impossible ton continue its focus on plant-based proteins for the foreseeable future.

Eat Just and Impossible Foods Both Made Major Expansions to Asia This Week

Two alt-protein heavyweights in the U.S. took major steps this week in their expansions across Asia, underscoring the growing demand (and need) for alternatives to animal protein in that region.

At the tail-end of yesterday, San Francisco-based food tech company Eat Just announced a partnership with a consortium led by food investment fund Proterra to expand JUST Egg across Asia. Via the partnership, Eat Just will build its first production facility in Asia.

The consortium will invest up to $100 million and Eat Just will invest up to $20 million to build the production facility in Singapore. According to the press release from Eat Just, the factory will “generate thousands of metric tons of protein.” From this deal will also come the subsidiary Eat Just Asia, which will serve JUST egg manufacturing and distribution partners across the region. 

The new production facility is the largest of its kind in Singapore and will serve a growing demand for plant-based protein in Asia. Eat Just’s flagship plant-based egg product is already available in South Korea, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The company also mentioned, via the aforementioned press release, a “yet-to-be-announced” partnership in mainland China, where it already sells products via e-commerce. 

Eat Just and Proterra are also in talks to expand commercial production of cell-based meat, which Eat Just is already in the midst of developing.

Also at the end of yesterday, Impossible Foods announced that its plant-based meat products will be available in retail stores for the first time in Asia. Impossible’s Beef product is now available at 200 grocery stores across Hong Kong and Singapore. 

In Hong Kong, consumers can buy Impossible products at 100 ParknShop locations and ParknShop subsidiaries, as well as for delivery online at parknshop.com. Customers in Singapore can find the company’s plant-based beef at 100 FairPrice stores and on grocery e-commerce platform RedMart.

Impossible debuted in the Asian market at restaurants in 2018, but this week’s news marks the first time the company’s products will be available to home chefs.

But while Impossible may be expanding its plant-based empire, one area we shouldn’t expect to see the company branch into is cell-based meat. In fact, when asked about cell-based meat at last week’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Impossible CEO Pat Brown flatly said, “It’s never going to be a thing.” Brown called it “irreversibly expensive” and added that meat grown in a lab would never be a commercial endeavor.

Eat Just doesn’t share the same view. Company founder and CEO Josh Tetrick, who was also at SKS, shared his views on the eventual reality of cell-based meat and gave us a rough timeline and included steps his company and others have to take in order to go from prototype to retail shelves with cell-based meat. It won’t be soon. Tetrick said “north of 15 years” for cell-based meat, and others have cited similar timeframes.

Were cell-based meat to become a commercial reality, Asia is an obvious region to aim for. Increasing urbanization and population growth, particularly in Southeast Asia, has led to a growing demand for animal proteins. This demand has consequences both for the environment and for human health.

Those are challenges plant-based proteins can address, too, hence the quickly rising number of companies in Asia, from Omnipork to Black Sheep Foods and now Eat Just and Impossible. While we wait for cell-based proteins over the long terms, we can expect both demand for and production of plant-based products to continue rising in Asia and beyond.

Food Tech News: Bee-Free Honey, Menu Items With Low Carbon Footprints

It was an exciting week in food tech with the annual SKS Summit happening earlier this week (if you missed it, check out the highlights of day one, day two, and day three). Outside of this week’s virtual event, a few other stories stood out to us, including bee-free honey, low carbon footprint menu items at Panera, Minnow partnering with two restaurants, and anti-stress nutrition bars.

Melibio is creating bee-free honey

Melibio is using microbial fermentation and synthetic biology to create honey without the use of bees. The process will mimic the process a bee would take to create honey and will use real flower nectar. Honey is often touted for its health benefits, and Melibio’s honey will contain small amounts of the amino acids, minerals, and enzymes found in real honey. The company plans on launching a product for food and beverage companies by late 2021.

Panera Bread releases climate-friendly labels on menu

Starting this week, Panera Bread’s menu will include “cool food” badges that signify which of its menu items have a lower carbon footprint. Around 55 percent of the chain’s existing menu items will have a cool food meal badge. Ingredients that are considered to have a low carbon footprint include vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes. Medium carbon impact ingredients include fish, eggs, cheese, nuts, and poultry, and beef has the highest carbon footprint. Last month, Just Salad also released a Climatarian menu that shows menu items with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions.

Minnow launches pilot program in fast-casual restaurants

Minnow, the recent winner of the SKS Startup Showcase, launched a pilot program for its contact-free delivery and pick-up solution. The Minnow Pickup Pods will be located at Crisp Salads in Portland, Oregon, and bNatural Kitchen in New Haven, Connecticut. Similar to the design of an Amazon locker, the pods disrupt the use of expensive third-party delivery services like Doordash or Postmates. Additionally, the pods have a touchless interface for pick-up, and the cubbies are insulated to keep food fresh.

myAir releases stress-reducing nutrition bars

Tel-Aviv-based startup myAir makes nutrition bars infused with different herbal compounds to manage stress. The personalized nutrition company offers a short three-minute quiz on its website to determine a customer’s level of stress, and then the customer’s heart rate, sleep quality, physical activity is tracked through smartwatches. This data is then used to determine what combination of bars would be most beneficial for the customer. The gluten-free and vegan bars cost $3 each, and are available in flavors like Calm Green (infused with lemon balm extract) and Sleepy Gray (infused with hops).

SKS 2020: What Does It Take to Build a Cell-Based Protein Business?

If you keep an eye and ear to food tech, you’ll know there’s been a significant uptick in interest (and investment) for cell-based meat products. But what can companies in the space do to help cell-based protein scale to address issues like global food security and environmental sustainability? 

That’s a topic FTW Ventures’ Brian Frank discussed at this week’s SKS 2020 show, where he was joined by Benjamina Bollag, the founder and CEO of HigherSteaks, and Justin Kolbeck, CEO and cofounder of Wild Type. 

Since both Bollag and Kolbeck have founded cell-based meat companies (HigherSteaks is working on bacon and pork belly, Wild Type on salmon), they had a ton to say — more than can realistically be packed into a few hundred words.

Kolbeck summarized his advice by pointing to three things companies can think about: taste, affordability, and building the kind of story around the product that will attract your average consumer. For example, when we reach that far-off day where cell-based seafood is available at your local Publix, its branding might explain to shoppers that it contains zero mercury or antibiotics, or that it’s a more sustainable solution to wild-caught seafood from our oceans (which are overfished).

“The role of brands will be important to differentiate and distinguish between companies,” he said.

I say “far-off day” because no one is going to stroll into Publix tomorrow, or even next year, expecting to find cell-based meat and seafoods. All panelists agreed the timeframe for that reality is years away.

Part of the reason for that is the cost required to produce cell-based proteins. Bollag mentioned media — the liquid that gets fed to cells to make them grow — as one challenge. Growing those cell in bioreactors at scale is another massive hurdle, as is developing the scaffolding to give products the correct meat-like texture.

One thing that could address all of those tasks and challenges isn’t even a technology. It’s simply the concept of not doing everything in-house. A company that develops its own media, builds its own bioreactors, and simultaneously tries to navigate the regulatory challenges for cell-based meat is going to be slow in reaching commercialization. “Developing the IP yourself is not the most efficient way to do that,” said Kolbeck. Frank was even more to the point: “Cell-based [meat] companies cannot develop all the IP themselves.”

That presents a real opportunity for many kinds of businesses to get involved in the growth of cell-based meat, from those building bioreactors to companies developing cheaper serums to lawyers with expertise in the regulatory realm. All of those individuals and companies working together can help accelerate the timeline between now and when cell-based protein products reach our grocery store shelves. Only then can the planet and the population start to reap the widespread benefits of cell-based meat as an option.

Green Monday Launches a Plant-Based Menu Across McDonald’s Hong Kong Locations

Hong Kong-based Green Monday announced today it has struck a longterm partnership with McDonald’s to launch a plant-based menu across all McDonald’s and McCafé locations in Hong Kong and Macau. The menu will incorporate Green Monday subsidiary OmniFood’s alt-pork products into the meals. Green Queen was first to break the news.

The new menu features six dishes developed around OmniPork Luncheon, a plant-based alternative to the processed meat product that’s popular in Asia. Meals include OmniPork Luncheon & Scrambled Egg Burger,  OmniPork Luncheon N’ Egg Twisty Pasta, OmniPork Luncheon Deluxe Breakfast and OmniPork Luncheon Jumbo Breakfast, as well as OmniPork Luncheon & Egg Cheesy Toast and OmniPork Luncheon & Egg Mayo Ciabatta. All items are vegetarian, though not vegan, since meals include egg.

David Yeung, cofounder and CEO of Green Monday, told Green Queen that the partnership is “the most monumental and game-changing breakthrough for the plant-based movement in Asia, and one of the biggest milestones globally.”

Currently, partnerships between McDonald’s and plant-based protein companies are few and far between. The mega-chain struck a partnership with Beyond Meat in Canada last year, though the chain ended that trial in April of this year and has no plans to renew it. In the past, McDonald’s has publicly said it will wait to see if plant-based protein is a longterm trend before aligning itself with any one brand. 

But thanks to the pandemic highlighting the perils of the meat supply chain, demand for and investment in plant-based protein products has grown so much that the sector is less a trend nowadays than it is a mainstay on retail shelves and restaurant menus. With other QSR brands already featuring plant-based items across their menus (see KFC’s Beyond Meat partnership), McDonald’s can hardly wait much longer to make plant-based items available among its own offerings.

Green Monday itself just raised $70 million. The OmniPork Luncheon menu launches tomorrow across more than 400 McDonald’s and McCafé locations combined. 

There is no official word on whether this partnership will expand, though Green Queen points out that Citic Group and the Carlyle Group, which operate the McDonald’s franchise business in Hong Kong, also run the QSR’s franchise business in Mainland China. OmniFoods debuted OmniPork there last year. Clinching the QSR segment market would be an enormous feat for both Green Monday and plant-based protein in general.

In Texas, BioBQ is Betting on Brisket as the Next Big Thing for Cell-Based Meat

What’s next for lab-grown meat? Brisket and jerky, apparently. Thanks to an Austin, Texas-based company called BioBQ, cell-based versions of both those meats are in the works, furthering the possibilities of the kinds of proteins that can be grown in a lab versus slaughtering an animal.

Those meat choices, says cofounder and CEO Katie Kam, make sense because of her company’s location, Texas being something of a superpower when it comes to brisket. Over a recent Zoom chat, Kam and fellow cofounder Janet Zoldan said they aim to have a brisket prototype in two years. The company is actively seeking funding right now.

Kam founded BioBQ at the end of 2018. In the fall of 2019, she brought Zoldan onboard as cofounder. “I thought her research in biomedical engineering could be applied to help with the development of cell-based meat,” Kam said.

Like other lab-grown meats, BioBQ uses cells rather than the actual animal to create meat alternatives. It grows the fat, muscle and collagen cells — all components that make up a brisket — using scaffolding technology to create the layers and marbling we associate with brisket.

What makes something like brisket potentially more challenging that other types of lab-grown meat is achieving that layered structure. For that, Kam says they use a patented technology to produce prototypes of intact sheets of cells that can be stacked together. “With each sheet about two to four cell layers thick, they are working on obtaining the thickness and layered structure consumers expect for jerky and brisket,” she says.

The other major challenge for BioBQ is finding a media for growing the cells that does not use fetal bovine serum (FBS) or anything else that comes from an animal. Since FBS is harvested from bovine fetuses in pregnant cows, its use as a medium for cell-based proteins is extremely controversial (not to mention, expensive). Kam, a longtime vegan, emphasized that BioBQ does not use FBS and that the company is looking for an alternative.

Finding that alternative will help BioBQ drive down the cost of producing cell-based meat as well as make the overall process for creating protein more efficient. Bigger picture, Kam imagines a food industry that relies less on the lengthy and expensive process of raising an animal, slaughtering it, and shipping it to cities. Instead, much of our protein will be produced in labs in cities and therefore much closer to the consumer.

Plenty of others share that vision, if recent activity in the cell-based protein space is any indication. Cellular agriculture startup IntegriCulture, in particular, is working to eliminate animal-based serums like FBS through its CultNet system. Elsewhere, Mosa Meat, known for creating the world’s first lab-grown hamburger, just raised $55 million. Mission Barns is making cell-based bacon, and in Australia, a company called Vow is taste-testing cultured kangaroo and other less-common meats.

Excepting, perhaps, the kangaroo, many of these cell-based meats are easier to produce than brisket, but Kam and Zoldan welcome the challenge.

“Everybody’s telling us we chose the more difficult avenue to tackle,” Zoldan said during our chat. “But I feel that our technology is more uniquely posed to answer [that] specific challenge.”

Zoldan adds that while the pandemic may have impacted BioBQ’s ability to get back into the lab, it has also highlighted why we need alternative sources of protein and “how important it is to control what we eat.” Stories of COVID-19 outbreaks in meat-packing facilities as well as other ethical issues at those facilities has called into question our reliance on traditional protein sources. “If we really can engineer the food that we eat, we can make it healthier,” said Zoldan.

BioBQ is still a ways off from getting its product onto consumers’ plates. A major priority for the company right now is getting funding to further develop its prototype, which the company hopes to have in the next couple of years.

Danone North America Implements Latis To Determine Ingredient Sustainability

Danone North America recently announced that it is the first company to partner with HowGood to use the latter’s food sustainability platform called Latis, which helps determine the source location, sustainability standard, and environmental impact of ingredients.

Latis tracks factors like an ingredient’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, soil health, animal welfare, labor risk, and working conditions. The Latis data engine contains 30,000 ingredients, chemicals, and materials, and Takoua Debeche, SVP of Research and Innovation at Danone told me by phone last week that the company will use Latis to determine the sustainability of ingredients found in Danone’s existing products, as well as future offerings.

Danone North America is the world’s largest certified B corporation, and implementing Latis will further expand its sustainability efforts. Trends show that consumers have a heightened desire for products that align with their own values around sustainability, and are reaching for products that are both sustainable and transparent. At the same time, other food businesses are responding with their own initiatives: Just Salad recently launched a “climatarian menu” to showcase menu items with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions. Even quick-service restaurants like McDonald’s and Starbucks have pledged to increase sustainability efforts.

In addition to sourcing sustainable ingredients, Danone is also looking at uncovering more nutrition benefits of the ingredients it already uses. This summer, Danone also partnered with Brightseed to use its artificial intelligence (AI) platform to uncover phytonutrients of certain plants. Danone is currently using this technology to specifically analyze soy, but will soon also be analyzing the nutrition benefits of other plants as well.

After partnering with Latis and Brightseed, more plant-based products will be in Danone’s product roadmap according to Debeche. Danone will use these two technologies to improve the flavor, texture, and nutrition content of current and future plant-based products.

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.