Nowadays, more and more people not only pay attention to eating as balanced and healthy food as possible when it comes to their diet, but also to where their food actually comes from. The number of vegetarians and vegans increases every year – no wonder when you keep hearing about terrible conditions in fattening houses and slaughterhouses. But in addition to meat and fish, dairy products are also increasingly being criticized.
One of the reasons for this is that the idyllic image we have of cows with their calves on green pastures tends to be the exception to the rule. Because, as a rule, the dairy cows stand in cramped stalls, often never see daylight, and the calves, which they have very regularly after artificial insemination (which they have to have in order to stimulate milk production), are taken away from them early on and often processed into fillets soon afterwards. For cows, very social animals, this is torture.
While there are already many plant-based alternatives to cow’s milk in stores, most of them don’t taste exactly like milk. This is perfectly fine for many customers, but it probably keeps one or the other from becoming a fan of soy or oat drinks. Another point is the usually higher price. However, there could soon be a solution for both problems that makes everyone involved happy: milk from the laboratory.
What sounds strange at first only means that scientists use a process called precision fermentation to produce proteins from yeast that are completely identical to those in milk. The end result does not differ chemically from normal milk, but does not involve animal suffering. And the product could also be modified during production if necessary so that it does not contain lactose, to which many people react with intolerance.
That sounds like a dream of the future and an obscure project that idealistic researchers are pursuing in the back room of a university? On the contrary: the international group Unilever supports the project with a concrete plan. When the milk from the laboratory is ready for the market, it will be used to make the popular “Ben
There is talk of starting the commercial production of laboratory milk and thus the new, cruelty-free “Ben
Source: “ZME Science”
