糖心视频

Blue Apron founder traded in meal kits for life on the farm when he started a few years ago to raise chickens with better farming practices.

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To aid in that mission, the company, headquartered in New York with operations in Arkansas and Oklahoma, announced a $10 million Series A round of funding led by and , with participation from Larry Schwartz and , executive producer of the upcoming documentary on regenerative agriculture, Kiss the Ground.

Prior to this new round, Cooks Venture had raised a total of in two investments. The Series A investment will be used to grow and commercialize on a national scale. It will also support the company’s regenerative crop management program, Wadiak told Crunchbase News.

鈥淲e have needs that continue as we grow, including lots of capital expenditures on the farm, which was built in the 1940s and needs continuous improvements,鈥� he added. 鈥淲e are also bringing in new researchers who are focusing on what other nutrition chickens could eat that are alternatives to corn and soy, as well as selection experts to help choose our breeds.鈥�

On the farm

Wadiak became interested in re-envisioning the future of agriculture in 2017 when , which had a network of farms in California and New Zealand.

When he learned that the majority of chickens on the grocery store shelves in the U.S. were from only two breeds of chicken and not raised in the best of conditions, he went on a mission to breed and raise a proprietary slow-growth, heirloom chicken in a way that took into account both the health of the animal and its environment.

鈥淲e needed to make a change, but it takes a lot of money to build up chicken breeding to create something that is scalable and is much better,鈥� Wadiak said.

He teamed up with , who was doing research on poultry breeding and had started the process with some investors. Wadiak 贰惫补苍蝉鈥� in 2018 and took over as CEO.

Cooks Venture touts itself as the only vertically integrated chicken producer in the U.S. that has an independent genetics operation鈥攂reeding through selection, not genetic engineering鈥攚ithout ties to the two globally consolidated genetics companies, Wadiak said.

鈥淥ur interest is using the existing understanding of nature to build better things with technology,鈥� he added.

Better tools

In addition to the investment, Cooks Venture is also announcing a partnership with Food In-Depth, a that went public this week. It is led by Bill Niman, who had owned . FoodID鈥檚 new platform is designed to increase transparency and accountability for food safety claims, such as food that is labeled “antibiotic-free” and “hormone-free.”

Cooks Venture鈥檚 chickens will be a benchmark for testing if meat is antibiotic-free because the company does not use antibiotics, Wadiak said. The current process for this involves sending a piece of meat off to be tested, which can take weeks and cost thousands of dollars, he added. FoodID鈥檚 test will be able to test and provide results in real time.

Meanwhile, Cooks Venture will continue its commercialization following extensive renovations to its facilities that started back in January.

鈥淲e will be ramping up and building out our research and development,鈥� Wadiak said. 鈥淲e will be doing increased research on building nutrition for the chickens and will continue our work on breeding that supports good soil and good health for the chickens.鈥�

Feature photo courtesy of Cooks Venture
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