A ”new milk” that doesn’t even look like cows in a photograph will be on sale in Israel at the turn of the year. Remilk’s New Milk promises to be ”real milk without the cows” – and already has the backing of giants like Danone, Pepsico and Nestlé. Is this an environmental feat, a technological breakthrough – or the next ultra-processed business solution sold to us as salvation?(Technocracy News)
What is the news about?
Israeli food-tech start-up Remilk is launching a major commercial experiment at the turn of the year: a ”cow-free” milk called New Milk will be available in shops and cafes in partnership with traditional dairy Gad Dairies.
Three products:
- ”Basic milk” 3 % fat
- Vanilla version
- Barista milk for cafes (foams and behaves like cappuccino milk)(jpost.com)
The branding is finely honed:
- ”Cow-free ” – no cows
- ”Real dairy ” – ”real” milk
- lactose-free, cholesterol-free, antibiotic-free and hormone-free
The background to this is a long history of regulatory work:
- The Israeli Ministry of Health gave Remilk historic approval for animal-free whey protein in 2023, stating that it is ”safe, of high quality and identical” to cow protein.(remilk.com)
- Now protein is used in liquid ”milk”.
- The same logic extends to Imagindairy, which has received similar approval for its own animal-free proteins and supplies them in Strauss Group’s ”cow-free” drinks and cream cheese, among others(timesofisrael.com).
The Business Standard/Technocracy composite on which the news is based sells the story of a ”post-cow era” – where the dairy industry moves from barns to fermenters(Technocracy News)
What is laboratory milk really?
”Laboratory milk” is not almond milk, oat milk or soy milk. The idea is to make the same proteins as in cow’s milk – but with microbes in steel tanks.
In practice, there are two technology platforms:
- Mammary cell cultures
- The mammary gland cells of a cow (or other mammal) are grown in bioreactors that secrete milk.
- This is mainly at the research project level, not a commercial solution from Remilk.
- Precision fermentation (Remilk and Imagindairy model)
- The genes responsible for the proteins in cow’s milk (whey, caseins) are transferred to yeast or other microbial strains.
- The microbes are grown in large steel tanks, fed sugar and nutrients, and produce whey protein/casein.
- The protein is separated, purified and mixed with water, vegetable fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals → a finished product that behaves like milk in coffee, yoghurt and cheese.(remilk.com)
Important:
- If the amino acid sequence and structure of the protein are the same, the allergy is the same. That’s why regulators require products to be labelled as dairy allergenic, even if they are advertised as ”animal-free” and ”vegan”.(ingredientsnetwork.com)
- The product does not contain all the components of milk: immune cells, small signalling molecules, natural lipid structures, etc. It’s about selected protein + industrially selected fats and sugars, not a complete replication of raw milk(ourcrowd.com).
Put simply:
Remilk-type milk is ”protein-technically” similar to milk, but as a whole it is a highly processed food.
The environmental and ethical story – what is promised?
Marketing is easy to sum up in three sentences:
- Fewer cows → less methane.
- A digester is more efficient than pasture.
- No animal problems in intensive production.
For example:
- Brown Foods’ UnReal Milk advertises up to 82% lower carbon footprint, 90% less water consumption and 95% less land use than conventional milk – according to the company’s own LCA calculations. (UnReal Milk)
- Several precision fermentation companies (Remilk, Imagindairy, DairyX, etc.) promise up to 90% lower emissions compared to the traditional dairy chain.(Guardian)
Two big muds:
- The figures are mainly the companies’ own estimates.
– The LCA model is always sensitive to what counts as the limits of the system:
energy source, infrastructure, nutrient production, side streams, cold chain, packaging, etc.
– An independent, broad comparison between a conventional grass-fed dairy farm, an intensive production farm and a fermenter milk farm is not yet available in practice. - Energy intensity and centralisation.
– Bioreactors + purification + cold chain = large, electricity-intensive industrial process.
– If electricity comes from coal or gas, the claimed climate benefit shrinks rapidly.
On the ethical side, the suffering associated with cows will be reduced – but at the same time, food will be decoupled further away from the land, the animals and the local producers, and transferred as a patented process to laboratories and factory owners.
The health aspect: ”identical milk” or ultra-processed product?
Remilk and partners promise that lab milk is nutritionally identical to cow’s milk:
- the same proteins (whey and caseins)
- roughly equivalent protein, fat and carbohydrate composition
- lactose-free version for lactose intolerant people(remilk.com)
But:
- Ultra-processed whole
– When considered by NOVA, such products are effectively in the UPF category:
Protein produced by genetically modified microbes, separation, purification, reformulation, additives and stabilizers.
– Extensive meta-analyses show that higher consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with increased all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events, although the mechanism is not simple and no single culprit can be named.(BioMed Central) This does not mean that Remilk milk is automatically ”poison” – but it does mean that it sits in the same UPF, not ”pure natural product” category. - Allergy and sensitivity issue
– Same protein sequence → same potential allergy.
– Marketing says ”animal-free dairy”, but from a dairy-allergic perspective, the product is basically milk protein with a different production method.(ingredientsnetwork.com) - Missing components
– Lab milk does not contain the immune cells of natural milk or all the bioactive lipids and micronutrients.
– The technology story is that ”these can be added if necessary” – in practice this always means new formulated additives, not the natural whole.(ourcrowd.com)
To sum up:
The nutritional level may be ”adequate”, but the whole is more of a protein drink-type industrial formula than an agricultural product.
Economic logic: who will win in a ”post-leave” world?
Remilk’s board already includes people from Danone, Pepsico, Nestlé and other food giants at management level. For these companies, laboratory milk is almost the perfect product:
- No herd of cows, no manure management, no network of small entrepreneurs in the fields.
- Instead, centralised, capital-intensive factories, patented microbes and licensable processes.(Technocracy News)
Traditional milk:
- a decentralised network of millions of small farms and farm entrepreneurs
- politically difficult to destroy quickly
Laboratory equipment:
- a few global-scale producers who can
– own the IP
– license the technology
– control the whole chain from raw material to brand
When you add on top of that:
- the climate narrative (”without us the planet will burn”),
- the welfare narrative (”our products are cleaner, without antibiotics and hormones”),
it’s easy to see why there is a push to push this kind of technology forward – and why critical debate is minimised.
The psychological threshold of the consumer: ”lab milk in your morning coffee?”
The Business Standard / Technocracy piece points out that the biggest challenge is consumer acceptance: how to get people to pour lab-made milk into their children’s cereal?(Technocracy News)
The toolbox is familiar:
- New language: ’animal-free dairy’, ’precision-fermented’, ’post-cow era’ – avoid the word ’GMO’.
- The green image: pictures of shiny tanks, green fields and happy children.
- Comparison with plant-based:
– ”more protein than oat drink”
– ”better foam in coffee than soy”
And:
- A slow acclimatisation – first café cappuccino, then ice cream and cheese, finally ”everyday milk”.
Where do Finland and the EU come in?
The EU is cautious but not passive:
- Precision-fermented animal proteins are treated as novel foods, so they go through a long approval process.
- A number of whey proteins and other animal-free milk proteins have already been approved for production in certain countries, but large-scale consumer sales are just beginning.(ingredientsnetwork.com)
A likely scenario:
- First, the ”innovation” comes from restaurants and cafés (”barista milk”).
- Then it’s sneaked into ice cream, cheese and protein drinks.
- Finally, there is the debate about why taxpayers should ”subsidise climate-damaging cow’s milk” when there is a ”clean, low-emission” alternative.
In Finland, this kind of narrative fits well with digital money, carbon budgets and food taxation: when consumption can be monitored and controlled, it is easy to ”nudge” people towards algorithmically approved food.
How should this be handled?
A few cold-blooded observations:
- Technology in itself is neither good nor bad.
– It makes sense that we explore ways to reduce intensive animal production and wasteful land use.
– It is equally sensible not to grant Big Food a monopoly on what ’sustainable food’ should mean. - Laboratory milk is essentially an ultra-processed product.
– The same protein sequence does not make it natural milk.
– The UPF research mass gives reason to be cautious if your diet starts to consist mainly of this type of product.(BioMed Central) - Transparency is more important than branding.
– The consumer has the right to know:
– the processes used
– energy source (coal, gas, nuclear, renewable)
– additives and added fats/sugars
– ”Identical to milk” is not a sufficient explanation. - A dairy farm is not just a production unit.
– It is a rural economic fabric, a cultural environment and a security of supply issue.
– Replacing farms with fermenters is also replacing local ownership with global patent structures.
Finally
Laboratory milk is not an immediate dystopia, but it is not a simple eco-feat either. It is:
- technologically ambitious
- economically ingenious for Big Food
- still largely a black box for the consumer
The smart approach is the same as for anything else ultra-processed:
know what it is – don’t swallow the marketing for what it is.
📚 Sources
- Lab-Grown Milk: ’Real Milk’ Without Cows? –Technocracy / Business Standard(Technocracy News)
- ”The New Milk”: Gad Dairies and Remilk present cow-free milk – The Jerusalem Post(jpost.com)
- Israel approves Remilk’s animal-free dairy whey protein – Ingredients Network(ingredientsnetwork.com)
- Strauss Group launches cow-free range featuring animal-free whey from Imagindairy – DairyReporter(AgFunderNews)
- First Lab-Grown Whole Cow’s Milk To Debut In The U.S. – Forbes / Brown Foods UnReal Milk(Forbes)
- Stretchy dairy cheese now possible without cows, company says – The Guardian(Guardian)
- Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review – BMJ 2024(BMJ)