Next summer, on supermarket shelves, we may find an ice cream made with cow’s milk… without a cow. Food giant Unilever wants to soon launch ice cream made with milk protein that is not derived from a cow, reports Bloomberg. More specifically, the company is currently working on a fermentation process that uses, among other things, yeasts and fungi to produce milk proteins in a tank. Lab-grown cow’s milk, if you will.
Within a year
Since cow’s milk contains many types of protein, it is difficult to grow it in the laboratory and obtain a satisfactory result that can be used in the same way as “classic” milk. Start-ups have already submitted several prototypes to Unilever: the company hopes to market its new ice cream within a year, under one of its main global brands. Unilever (Ben & Jerry’s, Miko, Magnum, etc.) did not specify which brand would be affected: the vegan ice cream had already launched under the Magnum brand in 2020.
For Unilever, the goal is to offer a product that emits fewer greenhouse gases, particularly methane emissions from cows, but is still profitable. Last year, Starbucks had also tested in its coffee shops in the Seattle region (northwest of the United States) the sale of products based on “cow’s milk without a cow” made by the start-up Perfect Day.
Source: BFM TV
