After "meatless" meat, also comes the milk-free mozzarella. Or rather, without milking the cows' milk. The project is by New Culture, a New Zealand startup founded in 2019 which writes on the home page of its website: “Cow cheese without the cow”. Cow cheese without the cow. Not only mozzarella, but “lactose free and completely animal free” dairy products. Lactose-free, and without interfering with the life of animals. The cheese of the future will therefore have the consistency, flavor and yield of "real" cheese, but will be (partially) produced in the laboratory. “We want to produce a delicious vegan cheese, which is better in taste, texture and functionality than animal-based cheese, as well as being healthier, much more sustainable and able to be enjoyed by all,” he said. Matt Gibson, CEO and co-founder of the very young New Zealand startup, who recently moved to Silicon Valley.
The need that this company made up of 8 people wants to respond to is that of greater sustainability of our eating habits, as well explained by some data reported on the New Culture website: the production of a liter of milk requires the consumption of about a thousand liters of water; livestock farms are responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions; over 56 billion farm animals are killed by humans each year; a single cow consumes between 75 and 300 kg of food to produce just one kg of protein; one third of the planet's arable land is sacrificed to forage cultivation. Also, an often overlooked fact, lactose allergy is the second most common childhood allergy in the United States. Not to mention that cattle farms, as well as contributing to it, are also affected by climate change: it is news these days that the exceptional heat wave which hit Italy (and Europe) caused a 10% drop in milk production.
The data are incontrovertible, but the noble mission of the New Zealand team nevertheless has a limit: it cannot be achieved starting exclusively from ingredients of vegetable origin, but it is also necessary to derive proteins in the laboratory. “We owe milk proteins – explains Gibson – most of what we love about cow's cheese such as texture and flavor, but they are so unique that they cannot be replicated in the plant world. This is why we are creating this protein, known as casein, in the laboratory without the use of any animal but only with the help of microbes. It is a process similar to the one that Impossible Foods perfects with the Impossible Burger, producing hemin in the laboratory”.
The procedure for creating "cow-free" cheese therefore simply consists in mixing these "clean" proteins with lipids and sugars of vegetable origin, to obtain a real cheese in all respects similar to that of animal origin but cholesterol-free and lactose-free. Healthier and with zero environmental impact. The first New Culture experiment was conducted on a typically Italian product known and appreciated all over the world: the vegan mozzarella, but the goal is to expand production in a short time, also thanks to joining the program IndieBio, which promotes and funds relevant scientific innovations to accelerate their diffusion. “We are still at the beginning – underlines Gibson – due to the nature of the technology we are working with, it will take more time to be able to put a completely vegetable food product on the market”. In the meantime, if someone wants to taste it, they can get on the waiting list to receive the vegan mozzarella at home, by filling in the appropriate form forms on the site. Estimated delivery time: 18 months.
