Impossible Foods
Image credit: Impossible Foods

Brief: Impossible Foods could sell proprietary heme to other companies – CEO Brown

June 25, 2021

  • Impossible Foods is open to selling or licensing its proprietary ‘heme’ ingredient to other food companies in the future, founder and CEO Patrick Brown has said at an online event.
  • “We have absolutely no aversion to doing that […] We just haven’t had the bandwidth to really think about those alternative business models,” he is quoted as saying by FoodNavigator. “[But] I am more than willing to do anything that will actually accelerate the availability and competitiveness of plant-based foods across the board, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we go in that direction in a couple of years.”

Why it matters:

Impossible Foods claims that its synthesized soy leghemoglobin, or ‘heme’ — which it produces via fermentation using extracts from soybean roots — is the secret sauce that differentiates its faux-beef products from those offered by competitors.

The San Francisco-based company says that the compound plays a key role in the umami flavor profile of its meat substitute products, in addition to providing its Impossible Burger with the characteristic ability to ‘bleed’ like rare-cooked beef.

An advocacy group, the Center for Food Safety, filed suit in a US federal court earlier this year, challenging the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) 2019 approval of Impossible’s soy leghemoglobin for human consumption. The court upheld the FDA’s approval in a non-precedential decision issued last month.

Join the Newsletter

Get the latest news & research from AFN and AgFunder in your inbox.

Share on email
Share on twitter
Share on facebook
Share on linkedin
Share on reddit
Share on whatsapp
Share on skype
Join the Newsletter
Get the latest news and research from AFN & AgFunder in your inbox.

Follow us:

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
AGF_ReachAds2.jpg

Sign up for our weekly food+ag+climate newsletter



This will close in 0 seconds

Join Newsletter