©stock.adobe.com/au/zhane luk
Covered in silk
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scientist who developed a natural silk-based food protection technology has won the inaugural BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation. Benedetto Marelli found that a thin layer of a silkbased film could protect food without the use of plastics and developed a startup to bring it to market. The edible silk food covering was developed after a failed fondue experiment involving edible-silk-covered strawberries resulted in Marelli discovering that the treated fruits stayed fresh longer compared to the ones without the silk treatment. This led to further experiments where it became clear that the silk recipe could be used to extend the shelf lives of staple foods like leafy greens and meats while reducing the use of plastics. “The development of new materials that combine performance with mitigation of environmental impact is an instrumental step to address the challenges that society will face in the next few decades,” said Marelli, who is associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“A big step forward has been achieved by our showing that silk can be applied as a simple coating to fabricate a [thin], transparent and edible membrane that helps protect food from spoilage.” Having developed this technology, Marelli co-founded Mori, named after the silk moth, to commercialise it. Mori has now raised almost $90 million for its silk-based technologies, with over half of that coming as part of its Series B1 funding. Its silkbased technology has been deemed appropriate for use in food in the United States and Canada, and various other countries recognise its primary protein, silk fibroin, as edible. “Being able to keep food fresher for longer periods of time makes the shipping and handling processes more resilient for farmers, food manufacturers and grocery stores. My hope is that this can also impact food habits in US, promoting consumption of fresh, healthy food and addressing the societal needs to reach zero food deserts and minimise food waste,” Marelli said. The BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation is intended to recognise researchers working at the intersection between the life sciences and entrepreneurship.
NEWS Call for transparency in pet food labelling
©stock.adobe.com/au/Monika Wisniewska
PACKAGING & LABELLING
to extend shelf life
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Researchers in Singapore are calling for an international labelling standard for pet foods to ensure that endangered species of animals are not included in pet foods. A team at Yale-NUS College analysed the contents of pet food that was labelled with generic, ambiguous terms like “fish” or “white bait”. They used DNA barcoding technology to look for shark DNA in a range of pet food samples and discovered that shark meat was present in almost a third of these samples. When the DNA was analysed it was found that vulnerable shark species such as the silky shark and the whitetip reef shark were being included in some pet food. As a demonstration of the widespread nature of this problem, researchers in the USA previously assessed pet food samples and also found shark DNA in a large number of them. Locally in 2020, marine biologists from the University of Queensland urged a change in how seafood is labelled in Australia after it was found that endangered species of sharks were erroneously being sold in fish and chip stores around the country as flake, so pets may not be the only ones accidentally eating vulnerable fish. The standards that define how pet food is labelled in Australia require that producers label their food with the specific animal (such as chicken, fish or beef) but no higher degree of specificity is required. The Yale-NUS researchers have called for a universal, worldwide standard of pet food labelling due to the widespread prevalence of inadequately informed shoppers and consumers. With shark populations decreasing globally, they argue that a set of global standards that require specificity on ingredients listing could prevent the extinction of these animals. The full study is published in Frontiers in Marine Science.
This issue is sponsored by – Schneider Electric – http://se.com/au/getreadyformore
