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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Crispr

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.”

The Spoon Weekly: Heinz Freestyles Condiments, Cana Shuts Down

Cana Shuts Down

Cana, the company which was building an appliance that they claimed could create and customize virtually any beverage, shut down last week, The Spoon has learned.

According to numerous Linkedin posts from previous employees, the company could not secure funding and laid off all of its employees last week. Cana, which had raised $30 million in January last year, promised to have the product ready to ship sometime this year. But despite having a working prototype and brand partners in place, Cana could not raise the “funding necessary to build a production line for manufacturing and shipping devices.”

The news comes just two months after the company brought on none other than Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame to be a brand ambassador, a hail mary move that didn’t work out.

Like many startups nowadays, Cana found the drastically reshaped funding environment just too difficult to survive. Consumer hardware startups have had a particularly tough time in recent years, and Cana’s climb was made even more difficult given the task of developing and building a consumables production infrastructure.

The Cana vision of a make-anything drink machine always seemed a bit too good to be true, so it’s a bummer we’ll never see if they could have made it work if they had gotten more funding.

Read post.

Attention Automated Food Retail Startups: Take Your Innovation to the Big Apple! (Sponsor)

The MTA is seeking a qualified vending operator to provide services consisting of furnishing, installing, stocking, maintaining, managing, and operating vending machines at locations within various New York City Transit (“NYCT”) stations!

Does your platform have what it takes? Learn more here about submitting a proposal for this opportunity today!

Heinz Introduces REMIX, a Coca-Cola Freestyle for Condiments

We weren’t expecting Heinz to show up with a cool new product this week, but a big company surprises you every now and then. 

No, it’s not MayoChup or Wasabioli, but the Heinz REMIX, a vending-machine-sized sauce dispenser that lets customers create personalized sauce mixes.

The new machine, which the company claims to have developed from concept in just six months, can create up to 200 sauce combinations from a base of sauces that includes ketchup, ranch, Heinz 57 Sauce, and BBQ Sauce. From there, the customers can mix in what the company calls “enhancers, ” including jalapeño, smoky chipotle, buffalo, and mango at varying intensities (low, medium, high).

The product, which is part of the company’s “Away From Home” (AFH) division, will debut later this month at National Restaurant Show.

The product is reminiscent of the Coca-Cola Freestyle, which lets customers create weird combinations of sodas to their heart’s content. However, unlike the Freestyle, it’s unclear how many restaurants are willing to cede floor space to a giant condiment mixer. Sodas are something customers actually pay for, and I’d gone to places just so I could use the Freestyle. So while the REMIX might be a draw for condiment-conscious consumers, restaurants will need to be sure the extra cost of having a REMIX adds enough to the bottom line in recurring or new customers to make it worth it.

But who knows, maybe all those RanchUp or Mango 57 nerds out have been waiting for the moment when they can finally express themselves.

Dispatches from Israel Food Tech Ecosystem: Anat Natan, CEO and Cofounder of Anina

The Spoon’s Joy Chen recently caught up with Anat Natan, the co-founder and CEO of Anina. Anina is an Israeli startup that takes imperfect food and transforms it into ready-made meals in pods. Food waste has significant economic and environmental implications, and it is estimated that the greenhouse gas emissions from food contribute to 7% of the overall greenhouse gasses emitted globally. They talked about the technology that powers Anina, operating in markets outside of Israel, and what she believes sets Israeli founders apart. 

J: Talk to me about the technology behind Anina. 

A: We create these laminates, these vegetable sheets, and we try to incorporate as much food waste as possible. The laminate is strong but flexible. We try to take the ugly produce, and we try to incorporate all this food waste in our production process because we care about all the factors of the produce outside of how it looks. A third of the produce in the US goes to waste due to aesthetic reasons. I think there’s a catch-22. As consumers, we want to be more and more sustainable, consume more sustainable brands, and support sustainable production. But on the other hand, we become, as consumers, more concerned about what’s perfect. 

After we create these laminates, we mold them, we fill them, and we close them. Our technology is protected IP, and this IP contains the process from fresh produce to the pod, including the laminate. We’re registering it in the US, the EU, Israel, and Singapore. 

J: Did you choose those markets because those will be your first entry points? 

A: Our go-to market is divided into two approaches. With the US, our brand will have partners to get to the market efficiently and reach customers in the right and creative way. With the rest of the world, we are going to use a B2B approach, which is a joint venture. We bring to the table what we know how to do, which is the production process and R&D. And everybody does what they know how to do best. The partners know the market, the consumers, and the supply chain. We start by creating pilots, and we’re going to conduct pilots in Israel, Spain, Andorra, and Singapore to understand the right way to approach the market. And after that, we will create a long-term collaboration with them. 

J: What type of consumer testing have you done so far? 

A: So much. We have conducted external research in Israel, Spain, in Italy (with Barilla) and very in-depth design thinking research. In the US, we have done a market analysis that organizes qualitative, quantitative, demographics, and surveys. Every time we ask the question, do you understand what it is? Do you know how to use it? We give the product to people to try at home and then answer surveys. Anina was established in June 2020, and I’ve been conducting research since August 2020 because I believe that innovation needs to go hand in hand with understanding how to approach the consumer. Obviously, they cannot imagine what they don’t have in front of them. But you have to evaluate what they think to make sure that you don’t bring an alien to them eventually. 

Read our full interview with Anat here. 

Restaurant Tech

Two Years After Buying Spyce, Sweetgreen Launches Infinite Kitchen Robotic Restaurant

Last week, Sweetgreen opened the company’s first robotic restaurant in Naperville, Ill, a suburb of Chicago.

The new automated restaurant, which the company calls Infinite Kitchen, comes almost two years after the company acquired Spyce Kitchen, a startup building automated robotic makelines.

The Infinite Kitchen name is not new; Spyce first used the name when it launched its second-generation robotic kitchen platform in November 2020 and, like the new Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen, the system was visually reminiscent of the Creator burger makeline. The system’s conveyor belt runs under ingredient dispensers that drop customized mixes of fresh ingredients into bowls. 

In the video and the press release, Sweetgreen takes pains to make clear that while it sees automation as a way to add efficiency to operations and enhance the customer experience, they are not doing away with humans as part of the Sweetgreen experience.

“Every meal begins with human hands,” says the video’s narrator, “from our local farmers to our team members, all there to guide you through the process.”

With the Infinite Kitchen, Sweetgreen has also rethought the customer process flow, integrating digital touchpoints (including self-service kiosks similar to those from Spyce).

You can read about the launch of Sweetgreen’s Infinite Kitchen here.

CRISPR

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.

Read the full story here on The Spoon.

Vertical Farming

Plenty’s New Vertical Farm To Produce 4.5M Pounds of Leafy Greens From a Single City Block

Today indoor ag startup Plenty announced what it claims is the world’s most advanced vertical farm. Located in Compton, California, the company says the farm is designed to yield up to 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens annually, occupying just a city block’s worth of space.

Using a highly-automated robotic system in what the company describes as a 3D vertical design, Plenty claims its patented technology will yield up to 350 times that of a conventional farm. Unlike most other vertical farms that grow produce on flat planes that mimic the field, Plenty’s 3D system uses vertical towers nearly two stories high. Plenty believes that their design architecture makes indoor farming more efficient by allowing them to grow more produce in less space. The company also uses robotics in nearly every step of the process, from planting to harvest

“After investing nearly a decade into research and development, ​​Plenty has cracked the code on a scalable platform for indoor farming,” said Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai. “With Plenty’s first commercial farm, we’re proving that our uniquely vertical indoor farms can deliver a reliable, year-round supply of fresh produce with positive unit economics.”

Read the full story at The Spoon.

Alt Protein

New Study Claims Cultivated Meat’s Current Path Is Significantly Worse for Environment Than Beef

A new life-cycle analysis by researchers at UC Davis has concluded that the current path of the cultivated meat industry’s commercialization process is potentially orders of magnitude worse for the environment than beef produced through animal agriculture, producing anywhere from 4 to 25 times more CO2 than traditionally produced beef.

The analysis, which at this point has not been peer-reviewed, stands in stark contrast to previous life cycle analysis (LCA) studies that have concluded the environmental impact of cell-cultivated meat – which the study calls “animal cell-based meat” or ACBM – is significantly less than that of traditionally produced beef. However, according to the new research, the problem with previous LCAs is that they do not accurately represent the environmental impact of the current technologies being used in the assumption sets for forecasts within the techno-economic models.

In particular, the study (which was first written about in IFL Science) says the significant environmental impact associated with the purification required of growth medium has not been fully accounted for in previous studies. According to the UC Davis researchers, these previous studies had “high levels of uncertainty in their results and a lack of accounting” for what they believe is the necessary endotoxin removal required for growth media. Accounting for the required purification is essential say the study’s authors, and they believe that the fossil fuel needed for purified growth medium components using the current anticipated commercialization process is anywhere between 3 and 17 times that of the reported “high” scenario for that of traditional boneless beef production.

While the researchers state their study is more accurate than previous LCAs that didn’t accurately model the cost of the production of the purified growth medium, they go on to say that is because the cost built into these techno-economic models is based on current systems being developed for the near-term commercialization of ACBM. They say that the industry would be better off as a whole if some of the key issues were solved before the industry focused on commercial scaling, such as developing a more “environmentally friendly method for endotoxin removal” or “the development of a technological innovation that allows for the use of an inexpensive animal cell growth media produced from agricultural by-products.”.

Read the full story at The Spoon

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

Washington State University Receives First-Ever FDA Approval for Gene-Edited Pigs for Human Consumption

Earlier this month, Washington State University (WSU) received the first-ever approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for gene-edited pigs for human consumption.

That consumption will be delivered in the form of German-style sausage, which will be used in on-campus catering services that raise funds for the WSU meat judging team. The pigs were processed at the WSU Meat Lab – WSU is a land-grant university, and much of the research on campus is focused on agriculture and nature sciences – and during the processing of the meat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected the meat.

The approval marks the first time the U.S. FDA has approved a gene-edited pig for entry into the food supply chain. The approval is the culmination of two years of research led by Jon Oatley, a professor in WSU’s School of Molecular Biosciences in WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

“The original intent in making these animals was to try to improve the way that we feed people,” he said. “And we can’t do that unless we can work with the FDA system to get these animals actually into the food chain.”

Oatley used CRISPR gene-editing technology to improve genetic traits in the livestock. As readers of the Spoon know, CRISPR accelerates the process through which changes to an organism’s DNA can occur as compared to other methods such as through selective breeding. And unlike transgenics (or what is often called GMO or genetic modification), CRISPR doesn’t introduce genetic materials from other organisms.

Oatley and his team gene-edited the pigs to enable them to sire offspring with traits from another male pig. This technique, called surrogate sires, allows the male animals to produce sperm carrying the genetic traits of donor animals. The surrogate sires are first edited to be sterile by knocking out their specific gene related to male fertility. From there, the animals are implanted with another male pig’s stem cells to create sperm with the desired traits of the donor male.

The long-term goal for Oatley and other CRISPR researchers is to use this high-tech form of selective breeding to disseminate valuable genetic traits in livestock. Those traits could be improved meat quality, higher protein density, disease resistance, or enhanced ability to withstand changing environmental conditions.

Oatley and his team used the investigational food use authorization process for five gene-edited pigs to demonstrate that food made from the gene-edited animals is safe to eat and is now working toward FDA approval for a line of gene-edited pigs. The pigs’ offspring, which aren’t gene-edited, have not yet received FDA approval at this point for human consumption.

Tropic Biosciences Raises $35M For Gene-Editing & RNAi Platform Aimed at Developing Tropical Crops

Agriculture scientists have continuously worked to evolve coffee crops to battle an ever-changing climate for much of the past century.

Some of the most famous examples of these efforts are from the 60s and 70s, in which horticulturists and ag scientists worked to develop hybrids to fight against an invasive coffee tree fungus (called leaf rust) that was propagating across the coffee belt of Latin America. Plant-breeding work done by research centers in Portugal and Columbia helped to create hybrids that combined the flavor of Arabica flavor properties with the fungus-fighting properties of Robusta.

While this work resulted in much more robust coffee varietials that have produced the bulk of coffee over the past few decades, coffee breeders today are struggling to keep up with the accelerating change in climate across the world that is making it ever-harder for coffee farmers to grow their crops.

Enter gene editing. Newer technologies such as CRISPR utilize genetic manipulation techniques that involve changing an organism’s DNA, so instead of spending decades to create new varietals that combine the desirable characteristics of different breeds through traditional breeding techniques, gene editing can get there an order of magniture faster by editing out specific genetic traits.

However, gene editing still requires a significant amount of time to identify the host genes that need to be edited out. To accelerate this process even further, a company called Tropic Biosciences has developed a proprietary platform that combines gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR with another biotechnology process called RNA interference, or RNAi, to accelerate the gene discovery cycle and help develop new varietals much more quickly.

In a nutshell, Tropic Biosciences enables editing to a host’s DNA to alter the target of RNA interference, allowing for direct targeting of select target genes to degrade protein production. Genes that belong to the host (such as a gene that, for example, makes a crop more sensitive to high temperature) or genes that belong to viruses, pests, or fungi (like leaf rust) can be targeted in order to protect the host against these organisms.

The company’s unique platform (called GEiGS, short for “gene-editing induced gene-silencing”), is being used to develop its own product pipeline, which as you can probably guess by its name, is focused on tropical crop commodities such as coffee, bananas, and rice. The company is also working with other clients in the world of agriculture to license the GEiGS platform to develop new crops or avian flu resistance in poultry.

Tropic’s platform has attracted $35 million in new funding. The round, announced today, includes lead investor Blue Horizon and ADQ, Bloom8 (previously Rage Capital), Skyviews Life Science, Sucden Ventures, and Tekfen Ventures, among others.

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.”

French Winegrower: Let Us Use Gene-Edited Crops

Last month, French winegrower André Baniol wrote an open letter to the French Institute of Vine and Wine (IFV) and to the French Ministry of Agriculture to make a plea for relaxing restrictions on the use of genetically modified crops.

As first covered in French wine industry publication Vitisphere, Baniol made a case for gene editing as a way to get rid of harmful pesticides without changing the grape varieties.

“They would simply receive genes for resistance to cryptogamic diseases, without losing either their organoleptic characteristics or their surname, the unavoidable access key to the market,’ wrote Baniol.

Secretary General of the Assembly of European Wine Regions, Aynard de Clermont-Tonnerre, agrees. From Vitisphere:

According to Aynard de Clermont-Tonnerre, the 50% reduction by 2030 in the use of phytosanitary products requested by Europe within the framework of the Green Deal is impossible without recourse to genetics. “Other countries like the United States and Israel are already using it to release new varieties, so we shouldn’t miss the boat”. Problem, in Europe, NTGs have been subject to the same regulations as GMOs since 2021. The latter prohibits the “deliberate release” and “placing on the market of GMOs” without specific assessment of the risks to human health and the environment.

As Clermont-Tonnerre writes, the US and other countries have taken a much more laissez-faire approach to the use of gene-editing compared to the EU, essentially allowing them if any changes made using the technique could have happened through traditional plant-breeding methods. The UK, post-Brexit, has taken a similar stance towards gene-editing, and just last month, China amended its rules to allow for a fast-tracking of gene-edited crops.

Long-term, the use of gene-editing holds great potential as a way to create plants that are more resistant to disease, pests and changes brought on by climate change. It also enables the creation of new crops, such as mustard greens without a bitter taste or pungent smell.

In general, the EU has been slow to take up the subject, but as pressure from different agriculture interest groups grows and politicians in countries like Switzerland begin to push for more relaxed regulation over the technology, one has to wonder if the European governing body will begin to take notice.

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.”

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.