The Plan to Put Pig Genes in Soy Beans for Tastier Fake Meat

Molecular farming company Moolec has inserted pig genes into soy beans to generate meaty-tasting proteins that can be grown in plants.

For Gastón Paladini, pork is a family affair. In 1923, his great-grandfather Don Juan Paladini moved from Italy to Santa Fe, Argentina, where he started putting a South American twist on classic Italian sausage recipes. Eventually, Don Juan’s company became one of Argentina’s largest meat producers. It still bears the family name: Paladini.

But in 2020, Gastón started having the kind of heretical thoughts that would have made his ancestors blush. What if you could capture the essence of pork—that meaty, umami sweetness—and put it inside of a plant? Paladini’s imagination ran wild with thoughts of a soybean that dripped blood: a chimera that packed all the flavor of pig meat into a seedling.

Today, Paladini is the CEO of Moolec Science, a molecular farming firm that uses crops to grow animal proteins. The idea is to turn plants into tiny, field-based factories that can produce high-value proteins and other molecules that might be used to supplement existing products, or provide a meaty heft to plant-based food. “This is the real thing. These are real meat-protein molecules,” says Paladini.