Saying that dairy farming is inhumane and unsustainable is a biased generalization. Expecting a mixture of lab-produced milk protein (which one?) and processed vegetable fat to taste like cow's milk is claptrap.
Will dairy cows be replaced by vats full of cultured yeast?
Photograph by Ringo Chiu, ZUMAPRESS.com/Corbis
Published October 22, 2014
The world's first test-tube hamburger has already been synthesized and cooked at a cost of more than $300,000. Now a pair of young bioengineers in Silicon Valley are trying to produce the first glass of artificial milk, without a cow and with the help of genetically engineered yeast.
Like the creators of in vitro burgers, the scientists behind yeast-culture dairy are concerned about animal welfare and agricultural sustainability—but also about creating a food that will find a mass market. (Read: "Test-Tube Meat: Have Your Pig and Eat It Too.")
Because their petri dish milk will mirror the formula of the real thing—the yeast cultures will be churning out real milk proteins—it will retain the taste and nutritional benefits of cow milk, says Perumal Gandhi, a co-founder of the synthetic dairy start-up Muufri (pronounced Moo-free) in San Francisco, California. That will distinguish it from soy- and almond-based alternatives.
"If we want the world to change its diet from a product that isn't sustainable to something that is, it has to be identical [to], or better than, the original product," Gandhi says. "The world will not switch from milk from a cow to the plant-based milks. But if our cow-less milk is identical and priced right, they just might."
The Hard Life of Cows
Gandhi and Muufri co-founder Ryan Pandya are both vegans who view the livestock industry's practices as inhumane. The cows in a modern dairy, they argue, live in crowded barns. Their horns are removed to keep them from injuring themselves or farmworkers, their tails are often docked so that workers won't get a feces-laden smack in the face, and they're given growth hormones and antibiotics.
What's more, the cows are artificially inseminated every year so they'll keep producing milk—and then, as soon as they give birth, their calves are taken away, to make the milk available for humans.
"Fundamentally, you're controlling the reproductive system of an animal. It's incredibly invasive," Pandya says. "A lot of people are motivated by the environmental factors, but imagine that happening to an animal. Really, if you consider yourself an environmentalist and then you consume dairy, it's all for naught."
The industry's environmental impact is also substantial. Dairy production is responsible for roughly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions each year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, mostly because cows belch methane. And although dairy is already a more efficient way than meat of converting plant feed into animal protein, bioengineers can do even better than nature, Gandhi says.
"Making an entire cow to make just the milk is inefficient," he says. "You're giving it all this feed and water, and most of it goes towards growing legs, growing a head, growing a liver and lungs—just living."
In contrast, Muufri's system can be likened to "an out-of-body udder" that only churns out milk.
Let's Make Milk
Making milk, while complicated in its own way, is nonetheless much simpler than growing meat.
"If you look at all the components, less than 20 make milk milk—give it the taste, structure, color you expect when you drink milk," Pandya says.
Muufri will contain only those essential proteins, fats, minerals, and sugars. Pandya and Gandhi's plan is to insert DNA sequences from cattle into yeast cells, grow the cultures at a controlled temperature and the right concentrations, and harvest milk proteins after a few days. The process is extremely safe, says Gandhi: It's the same one used to manufacture insulin and other medicines.
Although the proteins in Muufri milk come from yeast, the fats come from vegetables and are tweaked at the molecular level to mirror the structure and flavor of milk fats. Minerals, like calcium and potassium, and sugars are purchased separately and added to the mix. Once the composition is fine-tuned, the ingredients emulse naturally into milk.
By controlling the ingredients, however, Pandya and Gandhi hope to make milk more healthful. The team is experimenting, for instance, with sugars other than lactose, which 65 percent of adults have trouble digesting. And it has engineered a more healthful, unsaturated fat that retains the distinct flavor of dairy. Reproducing that flavor is a prime goal for Gandhi and Pandya, who were not always vegan—and who say they miss the taste of cheese, butter, and ice cream.
The Dairy Race
Last month Muufri, which began lab trials in May, received two million dollars in seed money from Horizons Ventures, a Hong Kong-based investment firm (no relation to Horizon Farms organic milk) whose portfolio of "disruptive start-ups" includes Siri, Spotify, and Facebook. Muufri hopes to perfect its concoction by next spring and to deliver it to store shelves as early as 2017, says Gandhi. A carton of Muufri is projected to cost twice as much as a carton of cow's milk, at least initially.
Muufri is not the only team attempting to create cow-less dairy products. Impossible Foods, started by a former Stanford University professor, focuses on animal-free meat business, but it's working on cow-less American cheese to accompany its burgers. It has $75 million in financial backing. Another outfit, Real Vegan Cheese, is run on crowdsourced funding by volunteer bioengineers in Oakland, California.
Meanwhile, worldwide dairy consumption continues to grow every year. Will consumers go for milk that's made in a lab by genetically modified organisms (GMOs)? The proteins made by Muufri yeast will be indistinguishable from natural ones, Pandya says, and the yeast itself is harmless.
"People who are anti-GMO who have legitimate concerns usually worry about supercrops taking over the natural world," he says. "We've essentially crippled the yeast, so if it does go out in the world, it'll produce only milk proteins and die within hours."
Some dairy scientists are skeptical that artificial milk will ever supplant the natural stuff. The 20 or so components of Muufri barely scratch the surface of milk's complex chemistry, says Philip Tong, director of the Dairy Products Technology Center at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.
"We've been milking [cows] for seven or eight thousand years," Tong says. "I doubt biotechnology could fully reproduce what Mother Nature intended." (Watch: "I Didn't Know That: Milking a Cow.")
"Milk production using a cow worked, until a few decades back, when the human population was small, but that's no longer the case," Gandhi replies. "We need to innovate to allow everyone to be able to enjoy a glass of milk or their favorite dairy product 50 years from today."
44 comments
If I could have ethically produced milk - no hormones, no suffering - then I would drink yeast milk/cheese. Drinkng milk is a choice not a necessity -- there is absolutely no need apart from the needs to drive down the cost to treat an animal less than humanely(hormones, shortened life spans, limited or no access to pasture, killing 1/2 of the offspring - no male needed).
Las levaduras pueden producir no sólo cerveza, sino, también, leche de vaca, ¡salud!.
Here's something to think about!
Back in the day when most people had to raise their own food and animals the people that lived on these farms hardly ever got sick even though they WERE hit in the face by a cows tail and didn't have anti bacterial soaps. They were constantly being hit with small amounts or dirt and the organisms in it and their bodies reacted by making antibodies in small amounts that protected them.
Even today's farmers and their families at often the ones that rarely ever get sick.
So explain the reasons that we are getting so sensitive to everything around us.
And the trace amounts of the things they cannot replace in ARTIFICIAL foods are going to make it even worse!!!
Drinking another animal's milk that was meant for its baby is not 'what Mother Nature intended'...
I recommend dropping one of the 'u's. 'Mufri' can be pronounced the same and is easier on the eye.
Lactose intolerance is normal and natural for humans - the mutation is in fact lactase persistence, in which production of the enzyme lactase persists after weaning, instead of disappearing as it usually does. On an unrelated note, I'm surprised at the silliness of some of the guys posting here - but then, breasts, boys, and Nat Geo have a long shared history!
Humans have not evolved to consume cows milk. We have been genetically designed to consume human breast milk.
Science
is now capable of 3D printing a DNA specific human ear or kidney using
skin cells, cartilage and muscle tissues that have been cultured from a
donors DNA in a petri dish. We can put that technology to work and
gain massive profits in a sustainable and ecologically friendly way.
What we really need are DNA specific , cloned and printed human mammary glands that are designed to maximize lactation output. I for one would be willing to pay a premium for a set of double D home dispensers. Strap those puppies unto my personal Cyberbot and come to Papa.
Or is this just a bad idea?
My sisters dairy cows live better then many Americans do and she like 1500 or 1600 cows.
This is insane: "Although the proteins in Muufri milk come from yeast, the fats come from vegetables ".... The cost of extracting fats from vegetables are very high, requiring water, fertilizer, and high quality farm-land. In contrast, cows are designed to produce fats from readily available grasses growing on marginal farm-land. This is called "sustainable agriculture".
The kind of reductionist thinking behind this idea, producing milk from yeast and vegetable fats, is the same kind of reductionist thinking that generated mega-dairies, and corn-fed animals: basically that we can ignore natural cycles and produce food in an engineered, industrial environment. The end result here is MORE use of fossil fuels, further reliance on engineered food products, and ignoring natural cycles.
I am all for advancement in science but the end result here is likely to put a lot of dairy farmers out of work adding to an already troubled economy. You cant guarantee some company wont get ahold of the technology and try to make money off if. World hunger is a major issue but the likelihood of lab produced milk going to needy countries without a price tag in not likely no matter how well intended the science behind the idea is. Science should be concentrating on other areas to cure sickness, explore the galaxy, etc. Lab milk will not make the world better because someone will exploit it, mark my words.
If you're going to synthesize, why not synthesize human milk? I find it odd that people would probably be more repulsed at the idea of drinking human breast milk than the milk of a completely different animal.
Lactose tolerance was a genetic mutation in the first place.
The intolerance, at least in in my case, was only brought about when a Doctor prescribed a medication that killed off the bacteria needed. If I read correctly one can't replace the bacteria once it's lost ( as an adult), because of the natural resistance your adult gut has to invasive bacteria..
Sustainable???? How can you consider that word when you are trying to supplant an unsustainable means of producing milk instead of running milk production as one of the natural processes of grassland management -- good native grasses (California's natives are almost all gone, they had root systems that went down 30 feet as apposed to 12 inches with what was replaced . . . they could take any drought) ruminants (such as cattle) grazing, followed by chickens, and proper management of the entire system . . . yields sustainable high volume output that doesn't ignore nature not think that we know better than nature.
JUST BECAUSE WE CAN DO SOMETHING DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD. We should be intelligently managing the planet instead of trying to through b*****t on the side of the barn.
It's very amusing that one sees "humans did not evolve to drink milk as adults" comments in almost every article about milk. If 65% of adults cannot digest lactose, maybe THEY did not evolve to drink milk. But that means 35% of adults CAN digest lactose! So obviously at least some people DID evolve to drink milk as adults!
No. I'm sorry, nothing artificial is better for you than something natural. That is our problem. We think we know better than nature. When we set ourselves up as Creator, we not only fail but usually bring about disaster.
Perhaps, I mean just a thought here, our time would be better spent making a dairy cow's life more humane and working on the methods used to get that natural milk.
I am generally against GMO products, simply because the potential risks far outweigh the benefits, mainly because, as in crops, they are being so widely "released" if you will, without adequate or creative enough testing.
However, this seems like a great application of GMO engineering. The organism is well contained, and designed for a very short life span should it "escape". Well done. I for one would be the first to try this, first for taste, then to make butter and cheese! My daughter is vegan, but only after being a life-long vegetarian dairy fiend. I would pay top dollar to occasionally treat her to a dairy product that she would allow herself to enjoy. And I would share a shake with her since I am lactose intolerant.
Like all natural vs. synthetic products, though, I am skeptical that this simplified synthetic moo juice could impart all of the benefits that natural milk does. It is the vast complexity of natural products that our bodies have become adapted to over the eons. That complexity often confers unappreciated benefits not appreciated until far down the line. Benefits such as buffering the impacts of the myriad components as well as metering their effects.
But, if the initial experience closely simulates the natural, than over time, the product can be constantly improved, if warranted, to make it closer and closer to what our bodies really want. In the case of dairy, if we can get some of the benefits, with none of the down sides, than we can probably gain an overall comparative nutritional benefit from the get-go.
Lastly, the overall environmental benefit seems obvious and the humanity perspective seems self evident. But at least the environmental benefit is probably not as great as would initially appear. An analysis would have to be done to determine just how much energy is used throughout the manufacturing process, from mining and refining of materials to their packaging. Also, what other environmental impacts do the production of the various components have as well as the end product itself. Until these analyses are done, it is not certain to say that one product is more environmentally sound than another.
I can see this discussion thread, and business plan, turning into a new "Soylent Green" script in about five more comments.
Since nobody else has said it, I will.
Look around you. Given the economy we live in, and the economic model we are likely to live with for the next few decades, this product will first have to be cheaper than real milk for the average consumer, then have the additional benefits of being good for the planet and for our collective karma for it to take off.
Cows' milk consumption is a cultural choice. Modifying the product to perfectly mimic cows' milk should not be necessary if the product matches taste and basic nutrition. We did not evolve to drink cows' milk as adults and do not need to drink it. It is a choice.
imagine if we could synthesise elephant seal milk. at over 60% fat, we could end world hunger!
If this is lab generated why are we targeting cow's milk? We evolved to consume human milk, but since the enslavement of lactating women is unseemly, we fall back to cow and goat milk. Since no sentient creatures are being harmed, we should target the food for which we've evolved, human breast milk.
@António Gomes Also, the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations both disagree with your statement that dairy farming is in any way sustainable. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
@Dwayne LaGrou Well my family were peasant farmers for several generations, where death and disease were a sad part of life. There's easier ways to infect yourself with needing a cow, if that's your fancy.
@Dani McIntosh Mother nature also 'intended' girls to start popping out several babies at age 13, many of whom will die, unless they die during childbirth before reaching old age in their 30s.
@Bodhi Williams - not so much a bad idea, as a scientifically unsound one, plus an adolescent oral fixation.
@Swiftright Right Because most Americans get their horns (read: fingernails) burnt out at 2 weeks old
@Swiftright Right Then your sister would be happy to modernize. Increasing output, cutting costs, reducing eco footprint, and keeping a few cows as pampered pets.
@David Alan McPartland Computers put accountants, type setters, and mail men out of work. Electricity put candle makers out of work. There's no reason dairy farmers wouldn't want to switch to this method of production if its economically feasible.
@Gabriel Prefontaine Give me a pair of lactating breasts and I'll feed on them all day.
@Gabriel Prefontaine Its really not that odd considering its taboo in virtually every human culture ever.
@Laura Shannon Agriculture itself is artificial, and only a few thousand years old, as is the clothes you are wearing, and the internet you are typing on. Are you seriously suggesting we are better off hunting for roots, wearing bison skins and only communicating in person?
@Laura Shannon How about water made from burning Hydrogen and Oxygen? It's synthetic yet 100% identical to the water nature provides.
A molecule is a molecule. Whether it is made from a synthetic process or natural process makes no difference.
@Laura Shannonn I know, just last week the creator sent (insert angles demons gremlin spirits or your pet imaginary agent of destruction here) down to spawn a disaster at the local Ikea store for daring to stock artificial wood.
@Laura Shannon the Creator is nudging us to find alternatives to what in the past we've so selfishly taken.
@Eric Lengvenis I milked my ex into my coffee when we had our first one. You got to get used that...........
And the cultural barrier would be even higher than with artificial cow milk.
Just look at your own reaction when you read the first sentence.
there..........see?
@Eric Lengvenis Human adults are even more intolerant of human milk than they are of cow and goat milk.
@Donn Clark @Bruce Lyon I think you mean "lactose tolerance in adults seems to be a recent mutation". For example, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141021125935.htm
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