Brown Foods unveils first lab-made milk product in the U.S. with potential to disrupt the market
Unlike the relatively unsuccessful launch of alternative meat, plant-based milk – almond, oat, coconut, soy, etc. – have become mainstream, and in the unrelenting race for anti-ag groups to turn consumers toward animal-free foods, another product is set to hit the market – the world’s first lab-made whole milk.
According to a report published in 2023 by the University of Saskatchewan and a precision-fermentation company known as Formo, lab-grown dairy has the potential to disrupt the dairy industry, possibly nabbing up to one-third of the current market share.
UnReal Milk
On Feb. 25, Brown Foods, a Boston-based startup backed by Y Combinator, announced the creation of UnReal Milk, a cow-free dairy product designed to match the taste, texture and nutritional quality of conventional cow’s milk, using a mammalian cell culture process.
While there are currently 28 companies around the world actively involved in the research or development of precision fermentation – and several which currently sell lab-grown dairy products in the U.S., including Perfect Day, Bel Brands, Cowabunga, Betterland Milk and Strive Nutrition – Brown Foods claims their processes and products are different.
“Brown Foods has achieved a significant scientific and technological breakthrough by producing the world’s first test tube of lab-grown milk,” says Dr. Richard Braatz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Edwin R. Gilliland professor of chemical engineering, biopharmaceutical manufacturing expert and member of Brown Foods’ Scientific Advisory Board.
“Unlike precision fermentation, the key strength of Brown Foods’ technology approach is using mammalian cell culture which enables us to produce all components of milk together as whole milk. Technology can also be scaled up using bioreactor systems to produce mass volumes of milk for human consumption,” he continues. “What makes this breakthrough remarkable is its scalability. This technology can be scaled to meet global demand while delivering a solution which is sustainable and resource efficient.”
Brown Foods alleges UnReal Milk contains all of the essential dairy proteins, fats and carbohydrates which make up 99 percent of conventional cow’s milk while “redefining sustainability in the dairy industry” with a product that has an “estimated 82 percent lower carbon footprint and uses 90 percent less water and 95 percent less land usage.”
On the other hand, the process of precision fermentation, which has been used by companies for a few years now, includes mixing yeast, simple sugars and gene sequences from cow’s milk into a bioreactor to create whey and casein – two of the most important proteins in mammalian milk – then adding fat and flavoring to achieve the right taste and texture, according to a July 20, 2023 article written by Björn Ólafsson and published in Sentient Media.
“The result is a product that looks, tastes, smells and feels essentially indistinguishable from cow’s milk,” Ólafsson writes.
Market disruption
Although processes to achieve lab-made milk products may differ, a potential for market disruption still exists.
In fact, through blind taste testing and consumer surveys, Formo found animal-free dairy “has the potential for a massive market disruption.”
Ólafsson notes researchers in the United Kingdom asked consumers about their hypothetical choices in the cheese aisle at the grocery store – three types of mozzarella, one plant-based option or one precision-fermented option.
“The choices were also presented with different price points, intended to replicate how the product would initially debut with slightly higher prices which would come down over time,” he explains. “The result was large support for animal-free cheese with nearly 65 percent of study participants willing to try the product, 21 percent of which indicated they don’t normally eat cheese.”
Formo Researcher Oscar Zollman Thomas believes the drivers behind this are animal welfare concerns and the common knowledge cheese is a processed food. He notes, while some consumers cast off cultivated meat as ultra processed and unhealthy, this isn’t the case for cheese. Therefore, he speculates many won’t care about the processes used to achieve lab-grown milk products.
Some optimism
While news of novel products may be concerning to the dairy industry, especially with an ever-declining dairy herd and lower milk production and consumption in the forecast, there is still some optimism among producers.
According to a December 2024 Farm Progress article by Senior Editor Fran O’Leary, dairy consumption climbed to a 64-year high in 2023, with Americans consuming 661 pounds of dairy on a per capita basis.
O’Leary notes cheese posted its third consecutive record year in 2023 as Americans, on average, ate 40.5 pounds of cheese, including a record 11.83 pounds per capita of cheddar and 12.45 pounds per capita of mozzarella.
With latest research suggesting saturated fats are important to the human diet, butter has also seen a resurgence, with 2023 per capita sales reaching 6.5 pounds – the highest since 1965.
Although lab-made milk may catch some consumers’ attention, the decline of alternative and lab-grown meat has shown many are actually turning back to an all-natural animal-based diet.
Hannah Bugas is the managing editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.
