Lezing
SG - Animal-Free Dairy Products
Did you ever taste Brave Robot? Probably not, it’s a brand of ice cream only available in the USA. And it’s one of the first consumer products made with lab-grown proteins.
About Animal-Free Dairy Products
Lab-grown dairy products are coming to Europe, too, with WUR as one of the research spearheads. Dr. Etske Bijl introduces this emerging field of precision fermentation in food science, with special emphasis on milk proteins and future possibilities to use them. Next, dr. Will van den Tweel takes us on the journey of ThoseVeganCowboys, a start-up company owned by the inventors of the Vegetarian Butcher. It aims to produce the first tasty, hard cheese without the involvement of a single cow.
About series ‘Cultured Meat, Milk and Cheese – A Revolution Underway?’
Meat, grown in a bioreactor. Real cheese and milk, lab-grown using yeast to produce proteins. Is there a revolution underway which will make livestock farming redundant?
About Etske Bijl
Dr. ir. Etske Bijl is a food scientist, specialized in milk and dairy products. In 2014, she obtained her PhD degree on the topic of "Natural variation in casein and salt composition of milk". From 2014-2017, she worked as a researcher at FrieslandCampina Research, followed by postdoc positions at Aarhus University in Denmark and at the Food Quality and Design group of Wageningen University. From 1 May 2019 she started in the WUR tenure track as assistant professor at the Food Quality and Design group.
About Will van den Tweel
After getting his PhD in Biotechnology (1988) from WUR, dr. Will van den Tweel joined DSM in the Netherlands. During his 30+ years at DSM, he held various international management positions in Research, Business Development and Business Management. Under his leadership multiple sustainable biobased processes were commercialized (e.g. fine chemicals for pharma, semi-synthetic antibiotics, bio-succinic, and canola protein). Early 2020 he joined Those Vegan Cowboys as Project Director. Those Vegan Cowboys, is a novel initiative of the founders of The Vegetarian Butcher (sold at the end of 2018 to Unilever). The aim of Those Vegan Cowboys is to sustainably produce milk proteins and their corresponding dairy products by efficient microbial fermentation processes.
The Animal-Free Milk Proteins Program
The NWA awarded 1.7 million euros to the consortium of Wageningen University & Research, Stichting Wageningen Research, Eindhoven University of Technology, HAS University of Applied Sciences, Alpina Productos Alimenticios S.A., Those Vegan Cowboys, Bromage, Ridiculicious, Lallemand Inc. and Stuurgroep LIB (Landbouw Innovatie Noord-Brabant).