(Bloomberg) -- Moolec Science SA is eyeing the vegetarian market after getting US planting clearance for its beef-infused peas, though it may be years before the genetically modified product finds its way to grocery shelves.
The legumes spliced with beef DNA, which received a green light from the US Department of Agriculture last month, would be the first GMO pea to come to market, said Gaston Paladini, chief executive officer of Moolec.
Paladini, an Argentine meatpacking heir, said he is already in talks with international consumer packaged goods companies that could one day can and sell the peas.
The US Food and Drug Administration still needs to approve Moolec’s GMO peas for consumption, and even then it would take years to bring them to market. But the biggest challenge may be persuading people to eat the peas.
Moolec originally planned for the peas — much like its signature pork-infused soybeans — to be an ingredient for hamburgers and sausages. But now it intends to target vegetarians seeking iron-rich replacements for beef. The difficulty comes in convincing them they aren’t in fact consuming beef.
“Moolec’s technology doesn’t involve any procedures with animals — none,” Paladini said in an Oct. 15 interview. “We don’t take cells from the animal and multiply them. It’s a fully synthetic genetic code that we buy in a DNA bank. We are tweaking nature.”
In addition, there is still consumer resistance to directly ingesting GMO fruits and vegetables — though there are already several products on the market, like squash and pineapples.
Paladini is undaunted by the hurdles. “The most attractive thing about this product is the business-to-consumer market, the iron-fortified peas on their own in a can,” he said.
Meanwhile, Moolec is currently harvesting its pork-infused soybeans in the US, which it will use as samples for potential customers, to gather information for a separate FDA application, and to grow its breeding program. It believes the beans, which have a pink hue, will be attractive to processed-meat companies looking to cut their carbon footprint from livestock methane emissions.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.