Race to Bioengineer Milk
Please consider Made Without Humans or Cows: Inside the Race to Bioengineer Milk.
From Silicon Valley to Switzerland, hundreds of millions of dollars are being pumped into a new technology to produce “real milk” – containing identical casein and whey proteins to the genuine article – but without any humans, cows or other animals involved at all.
There is a lot at stake. The global dairy industry was worth $413bn in 2017 while the market for infant formula is expected to top $70bn this year, according to Save the Children.
From animal cruelty on factory farms to deforestation and a rising portion of the emissions linked to climate change, raising cattle to produce milk is facing a growing reputational challenge.
“If you see how cows are treated in the milking process… from a moral standpoint it’s appalling to most people,” says Niccolo Manzoni, founding partner at Five Seasons Ventures, an agricultural technology fund based in Paris.
A study published by the World Health Organisation just last week involving almost 30,000 children across 16 countries suggested breast-feeding has a “protective effect” in staving off fat tissue. Bottle-fed babies, the study found, are 25pc more likely to end up obese.
Corporate giants such as US-based DowDuPont, BASF, Nestle, as well as start-ups such as Sugarlogix, Gnubiotics Sciences and Jennewein Biotechnologie are busy pouring money into lab research. They are developing products that are very similar to human milk, a complex hybrid of over 1000 proteins and a unique ingredient called human milk oligosaccharide (HMO).
Udderless Future?
An udderless future is eventually in the cards. But even if scientists perfect the technology, how far off is public acceptance?
Farmers will push to ban it. That’s for sure.
What about labeling? Using the term “milk” for such products will likely be restricted.
Would you drink bioengineered milk?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Thank you for the article! Our family also does not consume cow’s milk and are successfully replacing it with other alternatives. Our baby has been using HIPP formula since childhood https://thebestfromjapan.com/hipp-dutch-stage-3-organic-bio-combiotic-growth-milk-formula-900g, after my wife has lost breast milk and we are not going to inject in his diet is cow’s milk. When he grows up, we will try to explain to him the reasons for our decision and I hope he will understand everything.
I don’t drink milk now
I’m ready for Elsieburgers.
Isn’t the price of milk and dairy at an all time low? I vaguely recall a story here about a family dairy farm going under because of overproduction and a drop in demand. Same thing with meat, more people choosing vegan diets means less meat and fish needed.
I know they’re trying to think long term, but at least the alchemists were trying to make something valuable.
Who wants tits without nipples?
“Would you drink bioengineered milk?”
Will it be made using Los Angeles tap water? A new report says it contains things such as arsenic.
Milk — a petroleum product.
Perhaps the Venezuelans should look into it as a way to feed themselves, given the amount of nitrogen and other impurities they’re stuck with in their crude… Although aiming for egg may be even better, so they could make use of the sulfur as well……
Here’s a Bloomberg article that talks about dairy and plant based dairy substitutes. Dairy consumption is down 40% as people are realizing that cow milk is not the health elixer it is touted to be. If you do some research into cow milk and milk products you will discover that one of the best things you can do for your long-term health is…not drink cow milk and not eat cow milk products (yep, even cheese I’m sorry to say).
Moloko Plus™
How much oil will it take to produce a gallon of milk? How about efficiently producing oil from waste products and sunlight? That would be worthwhile.
I’m an udder man, myself.
Unless you’re getting it straight from the farm you might be drinking something even worse than bio. This should make AOC the fart queen happy. But not happy enough. She’ll still insist on a diet of cockroaches while she pounds down a big greasy one,
This is going to be touted at t he low cost alternative for all those on snap benefits and such. It’ll be promoted like crazy and people will listen and consume. My family won’t be though. Genetically modified anything makes me physically ill and this won’t be any different. I will say that this reminds me of the scene in the Matrix, where Neo asks what he’s eating, and the fellow rattles off “It’s a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs.” Before long, if the corporations have their way, that’s how we’ll be eating. Wigs the hell out of me to think we’re headingthis way…
This is part of the work necessary to eventually be able to deliver to deliver all food through replicators in every house.
Advanced milk substitute? I think not. I grew up on a dairy farm. Those cows are pretty pampered, because a happy cow is a productive cow. Stress them out and milk production drops rather noticeable.
But, don’t you understand, that anyone whose entire life and living does not derive solely from pliantly sitting around some “financial center,” collecting loot central banks stole from others, while regurgitating braindead nonsense; is, like, a, like cruel, and like racist, to, like, animals and, like, the climate?
Producing 1000s of proteins with genetically modified bacteria is quite a challenge. Couldn’t these brave scientists start with a flu vaccine? Millions of eggs are used to do it every year.
Believing in this kind of nonsense, is up there with belief in alchemy and perpetual motion.
You literally have to believe that after a billion years of competitive evolution, mammalian udders are so inefficient at doing what they evolved to do, that some doofs in a chemlab and their buddy named strep, can beat them at it with hardly any effort at all.
Yet, as is par for life in the DumbAge, you can rest assured that the same walking huh?’s that babble about this stuff, simultaneously believe they are somehow, like sciencey, and not, like, superstitious, like those religious guys who don’t “believe” in evolution and, like, stuff…..
My other half cooked salmon with asparagus and mushroom sauce and it was nearly perfect…just that the salmon was from frozen filet…I am very fond of fresh fish and don’t believe anything-like-fish would ever be better than a real fresh trout caught from the river – a real treat that I get occasionally in the summer months. I personally think that anything engineered never will be the same. Lots is lost in the variation and those little things enhancing the taste buds.
Be aware that anything labeled “Atlantic Salmon” is not real Salmon. It is farm grown. As such, it will not contain Omega 3, since the Salmon don’t actually produce the Omega 3. Omega 3 is produced by lower species. In addition, farm grown Salmon may contain more chemicals.
Manufactured with no glysophate would be the marketing tilt… that is if the water supply at the manufacturing plant isn’t already laced with the chemical.
I buy almond milk for my wife. She likes it the same as regular milk. It costs a little more, but $2.50/64oz isn’t exorbitant. Looks the same too. Don’t see how this is much different.
You can’t pretend to be useful for something, by “investing” the fresh print The Fed stole from others and handed to you, in an almond farm. Mindlessly burning through capital accumulated by generations of others on dumb stuff, is much more up the alley of dumb people.
I tried some almond milk, and ended up throwing it away. I was shocked to find it was sweetened, and “sweet” is a flavor I can’t abide.
Almond milk is gross. Ugghh. It’s the worst of all the ersatz milk.
Arent calves separated from their mothers so that we can get milk or killed even?
I cant say I feel comfortable with this. If the substitute is a healthy product, it would be a lot easier to swallow.
By the way we already have milk that has been stripped apart and reduced in fat and increased in protein. Tastes and looks the same. This is just the next evolutionary step. Imagine how much better off the malnutrition problem would be with milk in places that dont have cows.
It does not look or taste the same. I get raw milk (and other dairy) from grass fed cows – even Jerseys have richer flavor than Holsteins and it has the more orange color indicating more Vitamin A (especially butter). Pasteurization changes the proteins.
Are they engineering real milk or the processed homoginized, pasteurized version? If something is 10 steps away from the cow anyway, another few steps won’t matter.
(Eggs are even more important; real eggs taste very different and have a gold-orange yolk even when hard boiled, not a dull yellow one).
We already consume veggie burgers which look and taste like meat. We are headed to a star trek future where a meal will be genetically produced on demand and have all the good and none of the bad.
Cow milk is imperfect actually. Some have intolerance.
Bio-engineered milk is no different than baby formula (which by and large a success) protein bars, and a like. All are quite/highly processed though rather opaque supply chains. I strive to avoid such foods. But, heck isn’t our beloved chocolate bars exactly that…?
The TeeVee will tell them “It’s just as good as milk” and they will believe it and happily drink it. As a result, the downward trajectories of life expectancy and IQ’s in the US will “unexpectedly” accelerate.
I don’t see bioengineered milk being any more dangerous than, say, Diet Coke, which is known to soften teeth and cause metabolic issues. If it’s genuinely just like milk, it’s probably a great idea.
By the time genuine milk is genuinely just like milk, all women are clones living in perfectly uniform vats.
Comparing something to Diet Coke is hardly fair, as you are comparing it to something incredibly bad for you.
Things which are “incredibly” bad for you, are by necessity pretty obviously so. When half of humanity have been consuming something by the barrel for half a century, with no obvious to all effects neither good nor bad, it’s pretty much by definition not “incredibly” anything. Arsenic and bullets in the head are incredibly bad for you. Diet coke, OTOH, is no more “incredibly bad for you” than the bubbles in it are “incredibly bad for Gaia.”
To the contrary, in large parts of the world, Diet Coke is quite a bit less bad for you than the local water. Even the local bottled stuff. Dysentery is another one of those things which are quite obviously, hence arguably, “incredibly” bad for you.
I tend to agree because “incredibly” is subjective and toxicity is dependent on dosage as any toxicology student learns early. There are problems with diet drinks that use aspartame (easy to research) but in small amounts the body can detoxify substances fairly easily. Alcohol metabolism is much more of an issue I would presume due to the larger intake and carcinogenic metabolites.
On the engineered milk, I stay away from most products that humans create in a lab (I work in a lab). I barely trust humans to engineer a car that will not burst into flames so would not trust them for my food.
If this thing comes to exist, my hope is that it’s a genuinely good imitation, both nutritionally and flavor wise (like, will bacteria like it enough to make cheese?). I hope that we don’t get some harmful product foisted on us as healthy.
“An udderless future is eventually in the cards. “
As is one of flying cars, space travel to distant galaxies and teleportation.
Trafalmadorians are already doing it since Trafalmadorian ages.