The New Dark Age

Monday, 16 September 2024 — GM Watch

Impossible Burger maker drives rival out of business with “incredibly bitter” lawsuit

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. 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. GMWatch
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