Business | A new big cheese

Startups are producing real dairy without a cow in sight

Can precision fermentation eat plant-based milk’s lunch?

Cheese made with synthetic milk, melted on a vegan burger. — Image: Anna Gordon. Better Dairy - Hackney

Jul 20th 2023

IT LOOKS LIKE cheese. It smells like cheese. It tastes like cheese (specifically mature cheddar). And it is cheese—at least under the microscope. “Synthetic dairy” is made with the same ingredients as the conventional sort. But instead of getting the main ingredient from a live ruminant, Better Dairy, a three-year-old British cheesemaker, derives some of it from yeast. These microbes are fed sugar, which they then convert into milk proteins in a process which is similar to brewing.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “A new big cheese”