The all new “animal-free” Dairy: Synthetic Milk
You read that title right. The company Perfect Day produces an “Animal-Free Milk” using a genetic engineering technique known as “Synthetic Biology”, or synbio. This “milk” product is engineered by taking whey genes and yeast/fungal compounds and biologically engineering them to produce novel compounds through fermentation. They market it as biologically and molecularly identical to nature. It’s milk without the animal! Wow!
Wrong. The Health Research Institute (HRI) analyzed the product in 2024 using full spectrum molecular analysis, which detects and identifies every molecular species in samples. They found some startling results!
First, they discovered that the finished product mainly consisted of fungal compounds. Traditional milk from an actual cow is comprised of whey proteins and casein proteins, not fungal. They attributed this to most likely being by-products of the genetic engineering process. Even scarier than that, they found 92 different unknown compounds in synbio milk. They claim that their products are non-GMO, but they use GMO’s to create it. The finished product has no “detectable” GMO’s present, therefore excluding them from labeling their products as bioengineered. As noted on Perfect Day’s website: “Genetic engineering is part of our process, but there’s no detectable genetic material present in our protein.”
Per the FDA, products that are GRAS (Generally Safe To Eat) do not have to undergo preapproval before selling. The GRAS exemption allows companies to self-identify if their product is safe to eat. Most GRAS products are foods like eggs and oats. Things that have been eaten by humans long before the FDA was around and have a history of being safe to eat. The flaw with this exemption is that companies like Perfect Day who are creating these synthetic alternatives, are basing their GRAS status off of the consensus that we’ve been eating natural milk proteins. Whey and casein proteins are GRAS, but fungal are not, thereby excluding these synbio milk products from being safe to eat. Not to mention we don’t even know what most of it is made of.
One of their claims is that it leaves a “greener footprint”, by reducing the need for cows and carbon emissions put off by their feces. But the truth is that the process to get to the finished product produces just as many harmful effects on the atmosphere. Their methods require energy intensive GMO commodity crops. I think most people forget about the process of getting the raw materials to produce these “greener” products. They are still incredibly energy intensive and in the process pollute the environment the same if not more than having cows. The misconception that cows are polluting the environment and attributing to the greenhouse effect, is primarily due to poor management. Cattle has been around for thousands of years and the earth is still going. If they truly were polluting the atmosphere and polluting the environment, the earth would most likely have been dead long ago.
I’m not saying that the nitrogen emits from feces can’t be harmful to the atmosphere, but we have to look at all the variables. Part of the regenerative farming model we use, is the ability to harness the nutrients left behind in animal excrement. If we let it build up and just sit there, it will 100% go into the atmosphere. That is why the pastured model of moving animals is so important. Animals are hard on the land. Cows especially. They are land-intensive. They need to be moved very frequently to keep them and the ground healthy.
So how do we harness these nutrients left behind? Two steps. The first is chickens! Chickens are amazing foragers, and they love to go through the cow patties looking for bugs and larvae. In the process, they spread the manure out, coating the soil with its nutrients. It’s the same thing we do with compost. Just dumping a large pile of compost on a plant isn’t going to make it grow better. We need to spread it around, which brings me to the next step. Water. If excrement is left on top of the soil without any agent to assist it into the soil, the nitrogen put off by it will leech into the atmosphere. Not only is it bad for the planet, it’s also a waste of nutrients! Plants need fertilization and water. One without the other won’t work. We need water to help the patties soak into the ground, allowing the earth to absorb those precious nutrients. When we do that, by the time the cows make it back around to that area of pasture, the ground is even better than it was before! That is the beauty of regenerative farming. You’re taking something that would be bad on its own and using it to heal the land. Just imagine the soil after decades of following this model! The same thing applies to our chickens. We’re constantly making our pasture better by rotating our livestock. If you want to learn more about our pastured model, check out our other articles.
I hope you have learned something from this article and take this knowledge to heart. The food produced by corporate America is becoming worse every day. We have forgotten what good food is, and the only way we are going to correct it is to call out these large monopolies and expose the foul practices they are doing behind all the nice looking labels. The current food industry is dishonest because they know what they’re doing is wrong. Humans were not made to eat fake food. We were made to tend the land and eat what God has provided us.
Sources
The Non-GMO Project
https://www.nongmoproject.org/blog/what-is-animal-free-dairy/
Food Business News
https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/24918-three-issues-arise-in-animal-free-dairy
AFN
