Big steaks: The ‘vegan meat’ dispute with bite
How should the tension between collaboration and competition be balanced when benefits to people and planet are on the table? That is one question raised by a patent dispute between two big US-based players in the manufacture of plant-based foods.
Motif FoodWorks and Impossible Foods are locking horns over the use of heme proteins in their meat alternatives—such as burgers, sausages, nuggets and mince—produced using precision fermentation.
Heme proteins (or hemoproteins) are key ingredients in both manufacturers’ meat-alternative products. Impossible markets a plant-based meat (PBM), while Motif markets a cell-based meat product (CBM)—a distinction argued in the lawsuit.
Both companies’ products are aimed at the vegan consumer, and claim to be helping to tackle environmental and health challenges associated with traditional meat production and consumption.
The case also touches on the controversial issue of whether a product made from animal tissue can be “vegan” at all.
But before turning the microscope on to this dispute, it’s worth looking at the context and, in particular, two major trends in sustainable food production and agri-tech.
Tissue culture: a growing technology
Data revealed by “Sustainable Food Production and Agritech—A Patent & Innovation Report, 2010-2022”, produced by Clarivate exclusively for WIPR, looked at global growth in this sector.
A notable trend seen in the research was the lead taken by the US as the largest contributor of inventions in this field, with 40% of inventions relating to sustainable food production and agritech originating from the country (see figure 1).
Additionally, almost half (47%) of related, subsequent patents were filed within the country as a preferred market (see figure 2).
