Impossible Foods Will Hire Over 100 Scientists for This Reason

Plant based substitutes company Impossible Foods is looking into hiring more than 100 scientists in quest for dairy-free milk and meat alternatives.

The company has unveiled a prototype for dairy-free milk, although it has no plans to launch it at this time.

The prototype is just one step toward Impossible’s long-term goal of eliminating animal agriculture, which contributes about 14.5% of global greenhouse emissions, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

The prototype was shared this week as the company announced its plans to hire more than 100 scientists to double its research and development team over the next year and accelerate new product development. Impossible Foods ia launching a program to add 10 scientists who would otherwise work in academia.

“The plant-based alternatives that are out there are inadequate,” said Impossible Foods’ CEO and Founder Dr. Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D. “The reality is that if they weren’t, there wouldn’t be a dairy market.”

The company’s press release states that Impossible Foods’ mission is to reverse global warming and halt the world’s catastrophic biodiversity collapse by creating a mainstream, mass-market, consumer movement to eliminate the most destructive technology in human history: animal agriculture. The company’s flagship Impossible Burger has already started to displace sales of animal-derived foods, whose production is one of the biggest generators of greenhouse gas emissions and the leading driver of the global meltdown in wildlife.

In addition to doubling the size of the Silicon Valley-based R&D team over the next year, Impossible Foods is also aunching the “Impossible Investigator” project, a unique program to woo the world’s best scientists to work on the most important scientific problem Earth has ever faced.

The company has about 50 immediate openings for scientists, engineers and other R&D professionals to join existing projects; more will be posted throughout the end of the year and beyond. Impossible Investigators and the more structured roles will more than double the size of Impossible Foods’ R&D team over the next 12 months.

“Scientists want to solve the world’s biggest challenges. And the greatest problem we face today is our reliance on animal agriculture — the most destructive technology on Earth,” said Brown. “The Impossible Investigator program is an opportunity for scientists and engineers in or on the threshold of an academic career to choose another path with the biggest positive impact on humanity and our planet: using science to eliminate the most urgent existential threat we face.”

Brown, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Stanford University and a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, left his job leading an award-winning Stanford biochemistry lab to start Impossible Foods in 2011.

“I know the appeal of having the freedom and the resources to tackle great problems of your own choosing in whatever way you think best,” Brown said. “We intend to make Impossible Foods the premier ‘planetary technology company’ — the place for brilliant scientists to have that freedom to conduct the most cutting-edge experiments and bring to life world-changing inventions, with the potential to immediately scale their real-world impact and without the hassles and distractions of academia.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.