Impossible foods are having an impossible week in the impossible EU over their Impossible burger. The European Patent Office (EPO) has revoked the Impossible patent.
The EPO’s reasoning has not yet been published online, but GMWatch has long argued that GMO developers cannot tell patent offices that their product is novel, non-obvious and has an inventive step — all requirements for a patented invention — yet tell regulators and the public that the same product is natural, nature-mimicking or able to arise in nature or from natural breeding.
GMO developers can’t have it both ways; if one of these statements is true, the other must be false. If it’s patented, it can’t be natural, and if it’s natural, it can’t be patented.
Impossible Foods still plans to launch a wide range of fake products across the continent as soon as the appropriate Food Safety Authority gives them the green light.
Children’s Defense League argues that they are unsafe. The product includes GMO yeast derived from soy leghemoglobin. This gives the fake meat the appearance of having natural juices or appearing uncooked or undercooked. I don’t know anything (yet) about GMO yeast derived from soy leghemoglobin except that, based on the name, it is genetically modified, and that’s supposed to be a problem. Not for me, for the sort of people who are likely to insist that fake meat is better for the environment than the real thing. But that’s just not true.
The environmental footprint of producing pea protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, canola oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil, and potato starch is MASSIVE compared to that of a (single ingredient!) grass-fed beef burger.
As a farmer and soil scientist, it humors me to see the “statistics” on the carbon footprint of real meat versus plant-based meat.Where the hell do they get the stats for Impossible burgers using “96% less land, 87% less water and 89% less greenhouse gas emissions” than real meat? What farm did they come from? With what growing practices? With what inputs? And what meat production are they comparing it to?
Regardless of their statistics, the reality is: annual crops grown in monoculture (corn, soy, wheat, peas, sunflower) are among the most environmentally destructive form of agriculture.
Fake climate benefits and fake nutrition, but you have a right to be faked out or to virtue signal, and Impossible Foods wants to fake you out, but it’s been an impossibly lousy year for them. Their stock is down by half, and the news that they may not be helping anyone but themselves is starting to seep out of the impossible beef like the GMO yeast derived from soy leghemoglobin.
That is GMO veganistas. The Darth Vader of Corporate food processing. An evil thing added to a deceptive thing. But maybe that’s your thing.
And if you don’t force it on the rest of us, we’ll get along just fine.