March of corporate monopoly sees high profile fake meat firm bite the dust. Report: Jonathan Matthews

In his 2022 book Regenesis and his subsequent campaigning with WePlanet, Guardian columnist George Monbiot has championed “precision fermentation” (the PR term for synthetic biology – synbio – or extreme genetic engineering) as the main future generator of the world’s food in a “Counter Agricultural Revolution” that, he says, will mark “the beginning of the end of most agriculture”. But the latest development in the patent wars over synthetic (or synbio) heme makes plain just how disastrous Monbiot’s farm-free future would be for concentration and control of global food production.
 
On top of that, new evidence has emerged confirming that “precision fermentation” as a means of mass food production would also be disastrous for efforts to break free from fossil energy. Factory-scale data show that the real figure for how much electricity is needed to generate the precision-fermented food Monbiot champions is nearly four times greater than Monbiot claimed in Regenesis, making it a complete non-starter for feeding the world.

But even if that weren’t the case, the anti-competitive behaviour of Impossible Foods in shutting down an emerging rival bears witness to the kind of corporate padlock on our food chain that Monbiot’s “Counter Agricultural Revolution” would lock into place.

Patent wars over fake meat draw real blood

According to a 2023 Stanford University investigation, just one US company, Impossible Foods, holds more than half of all the plant-based-meat related patents in both the US and the EU, with a small number of other players holding the rest. And the kind of control that Impossible’s dominant position enables it to exercise has just been demonstrated by the fate of its rival – Motif FoodWorks.

Motif – despite being one of the best-funded companies in the “precision fermentation” food sector – has announced that it is shutting down, just days after settling an “incredibly bitter” Intellectual Property (IP) lawsuit brought by Impossible.

March of corporate monopoly

Impossible sued Motif for infringing on its patents covering the use of synthetic heme, which Impossible considers its “secret sauce” for making its burgers “bleed” and taste more like meat. Motif – a spinout company of synthetic biology’s biggest corporation, Ginkgo Bioworks, which also got dragged into the legal battle as a co-defendant – vigorously contested Impossible’s case for over two and a half years. It accused Impossible of filing the lawsuit simply as “a baseless attempt to stifle competition”, pointing out that, although both companies were using genetically engineered strains of yeast to generate their synthetic heme, Motif was producing a different type (bovine myoglobin, naturally present in the muscle tissue of cows) from the one Impossible uses (soy leghemoglobin, naturally present in soybean roots).

Motif also managed to knock down one of Impossible’s key heme patents. But six other patents that Motif wasn’t allowed to have reviewed by the US Patent and Trademark Office were enough, it seems, to force them to bend the knee and – in the recently agreed settlement – surrender their heme-related business to Impossible.

A joint statement released by the three companies (Motif, Ginkgo and Impossible) said, “This resolution affirms Impossible Foods’ category leadership and the strength of its product portfolio related to heme.” Which seems a euphemistic way of saying that Impossible pretty much has this sector sewn up, or enclosed.

As Chris Smaje, author of Saying No to a Farm-Free Future – a powerful critique of Monbiot’s Regenesis – commented on X, “The march of corporate monopoly in the alt-meat sector I warned about in #NOtoFarmFree is coming along nicely!”

And he said that before news broke of Motif’s closure.

Frivolous but deadly?

There seems little doubt that the prolonged and ugly litigation played a key part in Motif’s termination. A source close to the company told AgFunderNews, “The Impossible lawsuit [filed in March 2022] hurt a lot of the potential of the business and pretty much killed it.” The vegan alt meat publication Green Queen concurred: “The decision [to close down the company] was heavily influenced by the Impossible Foods lawsuit”. And it reported a venture capital manager with knowledge of the situation as saying that it was the uncertainty the case created around Motif’s heme products that proved fatal.

It meant, the source explained, that the lawsuit “achieved commercially what it wanted to achieve – which is that large companies, which are, generally speaking, quite risk averse, didn’t want to necessarily work with Motif’s heme. Motif couldn’t sell that heme as an ingredient because of this pending lawsuit. So from a commercial standpoint, Impossible was able to [hinder] Motif from going to market. Even if the lawsuit was partially frivolous and Motif had a case, it still stopped the commercial viability of Motif’s heme product.” In other words, the lawsuit kept Impossible’s competitor out of the marketplace and starved it of revenue… until it failed.

Investor sentiment souring

But the lawsuit wasn’t the only factor in Motif’s demise, according to Green Queen’s source. There was “a bigger question about precision fermentation [synthetic biology]”, and that is “whether or not there’s a customer” for its products. This is a particularly pressing question in a market in which, as AgFunderNews reports, investor sentiment is “souring on meat alternatives amid declining retail sales.”

The flight of private capital from the sector is, of course, the reason why George Monbiot and his ecomodernist pals at WePlanet have been urgently campaigning to have far more public investment poured into “precision fermentation” and other techno-foods, in order to try and keep the techno-food show on the road.

Removing safeguards

The onslaught isn’t just on the public purse but also on regulatory safeguards, with the aim of fast-tracking and greenlighting the introduction of these novel foods.

That is worrying, because although it is almost invariably claimed that Impossible’s synbio heme, for instance, is “identical” or “bioidentical” to naturally occurring soy leghemoglobin, we know from Impossible’s interactions with the FDA that that isn’t remotely true.* Another product of “precision fermentation” – synbio milk – has similarly been found to have a large number of “unexpected substances” in it that could potentially be allergenic or toxic, and which haven’t undergone any testing.

So, the “Counter Agricultural Revolution”, it turns out, threatens us with bad food standards as well as corporate monopoly, without offering us any realistic prospect of it solving the pressing problems we face.


*In addition, the company’s own feeding studies showed possible adverse effects in rats fed the GM yeast-derived soy leghemoglobin.