Irish genetics company wins €1.8m ‘Beyond Food Labelling’ grant
It was awarded the €1.8m from the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund, announced by the Irish Government’s Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation. The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund is a €500m fund established under Project Ireland 2040 and is run with administrative support from Enterprise Ireland.
Based in Dublin, IdentiGEN provides DNA traceability solutions for the meat and seafood sectors and will use the investment to advance food quality and integrity, working together with University College Dublin (UCD).
IdentiGEN has operations in Ireland, the UK, the USA and Europe and works with major international retailers, distributors and processors.
Managing director and founder Ciarán Meghen said the funding would be used to further develop genomic technologies to improve confidence in the origin, quality and safety of food.
“Food labelling is a major cost to industry and has been shown to be vulnerable to abuse and fraud. IdentiGEN has identified an approach to transform and industrialise the use of DNA profiling in food labelling,” he said. “This will involve working with the UCD Animal Genomics Laboratory where we expect to transform the cost base of DNA analysis, making the technology widely applicable.
“New technologies present us with the opportunity to disrupt the food labelling status quo. This investment will support IdentiGEN to remain at the cutting edge of genomics and we look forward to the global opportunities which it will present.”
Other food industry recipients from the fund included €1m for Exertis Supply Chain Services, Sonalake, University College Dublin for its Blockchain in the Technology Product Supply Chain project, and €1.8m for Allihies Seafood, Carbery, University of Limerick for its work in plant-based foods.
