Tyson Ventures invests in US food safety company Clear Labs

Tyson Foods, through its corporate venture subsidiary Tyson Ventures, has invested in US food safety testing company Clear Labs.

Based in California, Clear Labs has developed a next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform that supports high-volume testing for salmonella. The platform collects hundreds of millions of data points per analysis that can be used to learn everything about a pathogen in a single test.

Founded in 2014, Clear Labs claims to have built “the world’s largest food genomics database”, which is comprised of millions of entries.

Reese Shcroeder, managing director of Tyson Ventures, said: “Clear Labs offers an automated and intelligent next-generation sequencing platform built for food safety testing that’s fast and accurate. Food safety is an area of focus for Tyson Ventures and this was a good first investment in that field for us.”

The investment comes six months after Clear Labs secured $21 million in a funding round, enabling it to ramp up commercial operations and build new features for Clear Safety, its flagship product for food safety testing. 

Clear Safety is able to test for the presence of pathogens and conduct serotyping analysis simultaneously – and in about 24 hours – avoiding the standard delay of three to five days.

After the Tyson Ventures announcement, Clear Labs said in a statement: “At Clear Labs, we enable major brands to capitalise on a new era of food safety technologies by advancing DNA sequencing, bioinformatics and robotics to create preventative food safety management systems.

“We’re thrilled to have Tyson Ventures as an investor as we continue to help the food industry leverage the best technology for not only securing the food supply chain, but also tackling the need to sustainably feed a growing world.”

Founded in 2016, Tyson Ventures has invested in companies such as Beyond Meat, Memphis Meats, Tovala and Future Meat Technologies.

Last month, Tyson Foods announced it is using DNA technology to trace the origin of cuts of beef, as it responds to growing consumer demands for traceability.