New Additive Makes Impossible Burger “BLEED?”
A lawsuit filed by The Center for Food Safety challenges the FDA’s approval of a color additive that makes artificial meet appear to - BLEED!
The idea of giving the artificial meat that look is to make it appear more like real meet to people who prefer the real thing.
In a brief, filed Jan. 28 in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the center has challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s 2019 approval of soy leghemoglobin. (Food Safety Network).
“FDA approved soy leghemoglobin even though it conducted none of the long-term animal studies that are needed to determine whether or not it harms human health,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS).
“This includes studies for cancer, reproductive impairment and other adverse effects called for by FDA’s Redbook, the Bible of food and color additive testing. We find this to be all the more troubling because a number of potential adverse effects were detected in a short-term rat trial: disruption of reproductive cycles and reduced uterine weights in females and biomarkers of anemia, reduced clotting ability and kidney problems.” (CFS).
To make the GMO heme, Impossible Foods uses what is called "synthetic biology" which extracts DNA from the roots of soy plants where a small amount of heme is produced. They then insert that DNA into genetically engineered yeast. The yeast ferments and that process mass-produces the genetically engineered heme.
The argument is that heme is new to the human diet and has not been thoroughly tested.
From what they see as a problem with heme and color additives, the lawsuit demands more tests at the very least.