Intellectual property model of food maintains harmful reliance on GMO grains, detracts from regenerative agriculture, hastens soil loss
The Impossible Burger with its faux meat texture and flavor is increasingly popular in the U.S. Unlike the Non-GMO Project Verified Beyond Burger, the Impossible Burger is derived using genetic engineering. It is made with GMO soy protein from soybeans produced using the controversial glyphosate herbicide and a genetically engineered form of a protein called soy leghemoglobin.
The GMO Impossible Burger even carries the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new “Bioengineered” label for GMO foods.
Impossible Foods, maker of the GMO burger, also has patents on its creation, lots of them as pointed out by Seth Itzkan in a blog. Itzkan writes:
“Impossible Foods should really be called Impossible Patents. It’s not food; it’s software, intellectual property—14 patents, in fact, in each bite of Impossible Burger with over 100 additional patents pending for animal proxies from chicken to fish. It’s iFood, the next killer app. Just download your flavor. This is likely the appeal for Bill Gates, their über investor. It’s a food operating system (FOS), a predecessor, perhaps, to a merger with Microsoft. MS-FOOD. The business model is already etched in Silicon Valley — license core technology (protein synthesis) while seeking vertical integration of supply chains, which, in this case, is not from coders to users, but from genetic engineers to protein seekers.”
Itzkan writes that in Impossible Foods software-as-food scenario there is no place for nature. He wonders if the company will stand against healthy soils legislation. “That will reveal what their appetite is for,” he writes.
The software industry, Itzkan writes, with its focus on wealth concentration, ignores the fast-growing regenerative food movement that is offering hope for the planet by building soil health and mitigating climate change.
Meanwhile, Impossible Foods “frankenburger” relies on industrial agriculture with its pesticides, GMOs, and chemical fertilizers, destructive practices that are contrary to the soil building practices of regenerative agriculture.
Source: Seth Itzkan, Medium
To view source article, visit: https://medium.com/@sethitzkan/opinion-software-to-swallow-impossible-foods-should-be-called-impossible-patents-71805ecec9de#:~:text=Impossible%20Foods%20should%20really%20be,Just%20download%20your%20flavor.
