Animal-Free Dairy Milk Set To Finally Hit US Retail Shelves

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NewAtlas: A new kind of milk will soon hit US shelves but it isn't some plant-based product designed to resemble dairy milk. Instead it is made from whey proteins produced by microflora engineered to spit out exactly the same proteins found in milk from a cow. The unique cow-free milk is the first product from Betterland foods, a new company looking to create novel and sustainable food products. Betterland is working on the cow-free milk with Perfect Day, a company formed in 2014 by two vegans looking to find a way to produce tastier animal-free dairy products. Perfect Day's big innovation was identifying whey protein as the key element in dairy products that could only be produced by an animal. Every other element could be found elsewhere. So Perfect Day scientists engineered a type of fungus to produce cow whey proteins through a process called precision fermentation. Creating a cow-free whey protein is only the first step in the journey to getting novel animal-free dairy products to supermarket shelves. A series of ice creams using the whey proteins were the first products using Perfect Day's proteins to reach commercial shelves, but according to Ryan Pandya, co-founder of Perfect Day, a cow-free dairy milk was always the main goal. "The two new products are a whole milk and an extra creamy milk," adds the report. "The milk contains eight grams of protein and has 67 percent less sugar than conventional cow milk. It is also lactose and cholesterol free." While the cow-free milk "will likely still trigger allergic responses" for individuals allergic to dairy, the company argues this new type of milk may be vegan friendly because their whey protein technically isn't an animal product.

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