Impossible Foods submitted a petition to the US Food and Drug Administration in November to approve the soy leghemoglobin in its plant-based Impossible Burger as a color additive. Curiously, the burger has been served up in restaurants in the US since 2016, after receiving a Generally Recognized as Safe designation in 2014 by the same regulatory agency. But as the company gears up for a new use—to sell uncooked product directly to individuals in markets—the substance, which gives the meatless burger its red, bloody appearance as well its meaty flavor, must undergo regulatory review under the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The agency has tightened its scrutiny on colorings following debacles like the red dye #2 scare of the 1970’s.

Impossible Foods, founded by Stanford’s Pat Brown in 2011, makes animal-free hamburgers that look, taste and even bleed like the real thing. The key ingredient is leghemoglobin, a heme-containing plant analog of the oxygen-carrying animal protein hemoglobin; it is found in nitrogen-fixing root nodules of leguminous plants. Impossible Burgers, once found only in a few specialty restaurants, are now available in thousands of restaurants across the US and recently launched in Hong Kong; they even have halal and kosher certification.

Also soon on the menu is so-called ‘clean meat’ made from cultured animal cells (Nat. Biotechnol. 37, 9, 2018). Closest to market may be JUST, founded by social entrepreneur Joshua Tetrick in 2011. The company seemed poised to launch its product in late 2018, although that hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, it has joined with Japanese meat and seafood suppliers to develop non-animal-derived products for their market. Such cooperation among suppliers is not happening in the US, where meat producers are hostile to this new breed of product.