Lab-grown dairy: The next food frontier

Products such as yogurt and cheese are different than fluid milk, and may be more suitable for using lab-grown casein and whey. The synthetic proteins could be used to replace dairy milk ingredients or to complement them.

In yogurt production, for example, protein is often added to improve texture. There are differing proportions of milk components in various processed products. This means that fermented casein and whey proteins could augment or replace conventional protein ingredients. This is easier to do in products with high-protein ingredients.

That said, the potential use of animal-free dairy protein goes far beyond traditional dairy products such as cheese and yogurt. Hot dogs that contain milk powder and granola bars that contain modified milk ingredients are examples of the many foods that could use this alternative dairy protein.

Tackling malnutrition?

Perfect Day CEO Ryan Pandya said last year: “We began to look into how we can use our protein to prevent stunted growth and malnutrition in the developing world.” This suggests Perfect Day’s focus is on providing ingredients rather than producing milk.

Some products aren’t well-suited to this approach. Butter, for example, is made from milk fat and has almost no protein. We’ve long had a plant-based alternative to butter — margarine. But many consumers moved away from margarine and back to butter.

The Canadian per capita consumption of butter increased from 2.72 kilograms to 3.21 kilograms from 2007 to 2016. This increase in butter demand has led to an excess of milk protein in the marketplace in both Canada and the United States.

While it remains to be seen if these fermented proteins can be produced economically, their introduction into the marketplace could cause significant disruption to the dairy industry. The disruption would be due in part to switching some processed products away from conventional dairy proteins.

There would be additional disruption because of the change in relative demand for protein and other milk components. We would likely end up with more significant surpluses of proteins from both conventional dairy and synthetic production.

The future

Many issues need to be resolved before these products arrive in our supermarkets. The economics of production have to work. Products need to be reformulated to incorporate the fermented proteins with other ingredients to replace the milk components.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency currently describes milk as being produced by an animal. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet made a policy statement on classifying synthetic milk proteins.

Milk in Canada is also subject to a supply management system that includes quota for production.

Will synthetic casein and whey be subject to the same system? The regulatory environment will require significant clarification, and any changes will be vigorously debated by various interests.

Some consumers will highly value the fact that animals are not required to produce these proteins, creating a vegan, lactose-free product. There will also be a perception that synthetic dairy proteins will have a smaller environmental footprint.

Other consumers will likely have concerns that the proteins are produced using a genetically modified yeast.

Despite these uncertainties, we will likely see synthetic dairy products on grocery shelves within a few years.

This article is republished from The Conversation. Read the original article here.

Disclosure: Michael von Massow receives funding from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food to research issues in food waste and nutrition labeling for restaurant menus. He has received funding from the Walmart Foundation to explore food waste at the household level. He has received money from the Tim Hortons Sustainable Food Management Fund to explore consumer attitudes to antibiotic use and animal welfare. He has also received funding from Longo’s Brothers Markets in support of research into consumer behaviour in food retail.