Milk by Matthew Evans

Author:Matthew Evans [Matthew Evans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2024-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

If plant-based ‘milks’ are trying to mimic real milk, they could find it hard going – partly because we don’t yet really know what milk is, let alone exactly what’s in it. It’s hard to replicate when you don’t know what you’re replicating. And so far, while some plant juices might perform closer to milk in your cappuccino – far closer than pigeon milk, I imagine – those plant milks are generally bereft of real milk’s macronutrients, let alone its micronutrients.

There’s other work being done, scary work, to see if we can alter the milk an actual animal gives. In China, cows have had human mammary gland genetics inserted into them, so their milk is ‘80 percent the same as human breastmilk’, according to the researcher involved. The 300 cloned cattle on the researcher’s farm near Beijing, according to reports from 2011, ‘could provide the same nutritional properties as human breastmilk, but with a taste even stronger and sweeter’.2

There’s also a move to make milk that is nutrient dense, particularly higher in protein – without even using a cow, or a pigeon, but still using genetic modification.

This technology uses genetically modified yeasts, the kind being harnessed to provide proteins to put in fake meats. It’s been dubbed ‘precision fermentation’ by proponents, who point out that it’s the same basic process – fermentation – that is used to turn soybeans into soy sauce, and barley into beer. The ‘precision’ bit is marketing spin, and clever it is, too. It’s also called ‘recombinant protein expression’ or ‘microbial fermentation’ or ‘cell factories’, depending on who you talk to.

In Australia, our pre-eminent scientific organisation, the CSIRO, does a lot of cutting-edge research, these days often in partnership with private companies. One such partnership is with start-up company Eden Brew. They’re inserting into yeasts the genes that make cow milk proteins, to ferment a milk substitute. As they explain:

Nature’s method is perfect … but it didn’t count on having 10 billion mouths to feed. So we’ve stepped in. We map cow milk genes to produce dairy proteins that deliver cow milk nutrition and sensory experience.

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