Singapore startup wants to make cow’s milk – without cows

Our supersized hunger for meat results in a whopper of an environmental impact, with the global livestock industry contributing nearly 15% of greenhouse gas emissions.

The dairy industry alone – which makes the milk that you mix with your coffee, the cheese that goes into your sandwich, and the ice cream that cools you down in summer – accounts for a significant portion of the damage to our climate crisis-afflicted environment. (Fun fact: there are around 270 million dairy cows around the world).

Photo credit: Donald Modeste / Unsplash

That’s why a number of startups are racing to produce meat, seafood, and dairy products in a lab by growing them from cell-based materials. No cows – or any other animals – needed.

One of those companies is Singapore-based TurtleTree Labs. Founder Fengru Lin has set early next year as the deadline for her fledgling company to produce one glass of milk in its facility, putting it on course to go into pilot production phase in late 2020.

Soy latte? I’ll pass

The obvious first question is this: OK, I can see why we need lab-grown meat, but do we need lab-grown milk when there are already many plant-based alternatives made from the likes of soy, almond, and oats?

“Plant-alternative [milk] consumption all over the world takes up about 2%. [But] 98% of the world still wants cow’s milk – dairy milk,” Lin tells Tech in Asia. “And whether or not we know it, it’s in a lot of products we consume. It’s in biscuits. It’s in bread and cake.”

The 31-year old entrepreneur envisages her labs’ milk being used in the future to make “baby formula, cheese, butter, yogurt, and creams for cooking” – products that “are not available through plant-based alternatives as they don’t have the composition and the taste of dairy milk.”

The goal is not to make a vegan product per se. Instead, TurtleTree wants to make one that tastes just like cow’s milk and has the same nutritional value but avoids the animal cruelty and environmental tolls of the US$674 billion dairy industry, and can be made into multiple products.

“So this is where we see the most impact -by giving people what they want and not having to change their habits,” she points out.

Got milk

Lin and her two co-founders, Max Rye, 40, and Mkulima Britt 47, put up the firm in January, but none of them have a science background. Since then, the entrepreneurial trio has been gathering a team of experienced biotech scientists to work on producing milk from cow mammary cells.

Founding trio, clockwise from left: Max Rye, Mkulima Britt, Fengru Lin / Photo credit: TurtleTree Labs

Rather than building itself into a food giant to rival the likes of Nestle and Danone, TurtleTree will license its technology to business partners. As such, the startup isn’t going to build factories.

Biotech challenges

Southeast Asia first