After working at MassBiologics less than a year, Pandya quit in 2014 to found Perfect Day with another vegan biologist, Perumal Gandhi, also now 27. Their Berkeley, California, company has developed a technology to insert a DNA sequence into microflora like yeast that produces casein and whey proteins that are identical to those found in cow’s milk. Rather than create its own line of grocery store items, Perfect Day, which has raised $40 million from investors, is selling its proteins to large food manufacturers to turn into mayonnaise, protein bars, baby formula and cookies.I don't really understand - do those proteins make cream? Because milk only tastes good because of the cream. (If you're going to drink skim milk, you may as well go with unsweetened almond milk.) And the article does not involve any actual taste test of a milk product made this
Anyway, I am curious as to whether this can be a success. Isn't raising yeast in gigantic bio-reactors pretty efficient, and economical?
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This is so crazy I see it as a simple labelling problem. Teats are for milk. Yeast is for beer. Here is a bit of a lesson as to what can go wrong if you don't label things properly. Hopefully we won't ever get this one wrong again. I'm hoping we can nail this one down forevermore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2ow5lo4VQ
I'd be surprised if they can make micro-organisms create milk. It is the fats that also provide taste and that is about much more than tweaking DNA because fats are produced by a very complicated process involving multiple steps. A more viable method would be to use the cells from animals that produce milk but the challenge there is that cells in bodies of complex creatures need a particular environment to function properly.
When we used to milk cows we were paid almost exclusively on the some metric relating to cream content. If the cows aren't in the sun there is no vitamin D in the cream. What about vitamin K2 and A? This yeast making these fat soluble vitamins also? The kids will get rickets.
"to insert a DNA sequence into microflora like yeast that produces casein and whey proteins that are identical to those found in cow’s milk. "
Casein is actually a pretty nasty protein for humans. And we already have cows making this stuff. What has been very odd about the genetic guys is that they virtually never turn their abilities to anything useful.
"Anyway, I am curious as to whether this can be a success. Isn't raising yeast in gigantic bio-reactors pretty efficient, and economical?"
Yeast uses sugar as its food. So of course its not efficient. It means you have to bring sugar from the other side of the world, it will have been refined already so its endlessly wasteful. Even if you have a sugar cane farm right there, and you crushed the cane right above the vat it would not quality as energy-efficient. Of course we would have to look up their setup.
See in real life what we need to be looking at is the dissemination of mobile milking units, along with the terracing of the land. That way the cows can be mobbed up and moving, not taking these gigantic detours to a fixed cowshed twice a day, where they leave all their manure to be washed into a creek. For soil development the manure needs to be spread over the land.
Is the yeast going to jump out of the vat and turn grass into fertiliser? I don't think so. People need to take a holistic approach to these things. Geneticists need to be making our food more nutrient dense. Not trying to get a carrot to do what an elephant is doing or vice versa.
Vitamin K2 is created by the bacteria in cows when the cows have eaten green stuff and its got to be made in the context of fat, because K2 is fat soluble. So no vitamins D and K2. A vat has to be made by high-energy industrial processes but a cow in the context of permaculture doesn't take up any oil barrow consumption at all. The milking will take some energy. The ride up the hill on the farm bike to open the gates. If you've already grown all the fence posts its essentially a matter of opening the gate, letting the cows through to the new grass, close the gate, then you're done. You would have to drag the mobile milking unit around. Thats a bit of energy. Setting up the terraces would require a lot of energy one time. I know most dairy farms don't act like this but this is the low-energy, high nutrition, good soil way to do it. Thats what we should be looking at. Plus we could be setting up these farms to be huge exporters of energy.
Cows reproduce. That makes them an appreciating asset. Factories don't reproduce themselves. They are a depreciating asset. So this would be a monstrous misallocation of resources. The cheap loan money ought to be going to converting farms to permaculture operations. Not making the agricultural industrial.
This is the sort of stupidity we have today. Turning men into women, women into men, plants into fake unhealthy meat. Here we are with a long-term energy crisis that will take us decades to overcome. And we are trying to make meat from peas and milk from yeast. These are low grade products that will lead to sick people when we can have higher grade products that take less energy to produce. This is the perversion of genetics that South Park captures pretty well. Making monkeys with 7 assholes is less foolish than this sort of stuff.
A while back, there was a report that yeast can be modified to produce thebaine, which can be used to produce heroin, amongst other things. The yield was nowhere near what would be need to replace poppy fields, but the uses to which simple bacteria can be put are astounding.
On a related note, and seeing you've mentioned meat and egg substitutes recently, I wonder why growing hide for use in the leather industry hasn't received much attention. The ability to produce uniform sizes and qualities of leather would be quite valuable. That and the material to make gelatin.
This is industry funded research that aims for commercial returns. It is not the fundamental genetic research that is needed. We don't understand very much about genetics but that type of research doesn't get funded because it takes decades and offers no immediate commercial possibility.
In summary we need to transform agriculture. To produce better food, soil and become an exporter of energy rather than a consumer of energy. We don't need a monkey with seven assholes.
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