K A S H R U T . C O M_©

April 27, 2023 from the Times of Israel:

"Food tech startup says health ministry’s ‘historic’ approval found its animal-free milk protein to be ‘safe, of high-quality, and identical to its cow-derived counterpart’

"Israel has granted local food tech startup Remilk, a developer of cultured milk and dairy, the first regulatory approval of its kind to market and sell cow-free milk products to consumers in the country.

"The Israeli-based startup said that the “historic” regulatory approval by the country’s health ministry clears the path for the sale of dairy products made with Remilk’s non-animal protein that are free of lactose, cholesterol, antibiotics and growth hormones.

"Founded in 2019, Remilk produces milk proteins via a yeast-based fermentation process that renders them “chemically identical” to those present in cow-produced milk and dairy products. The startup claims that the result is 100 percent similar to “real” milk. Remilk recreates the milk proteins by taking the genes that encode them and inserting them into a single-cell microbe, which they manipulated genetically to express the protein. The product is then dried into a powder.

"Earlier this year, Remilk won regulatory approval to sell its cow-free milk in Singapore and a letter from the US Food and Drug Administration that its animal-free whey protein can be safely used in food products. That’s after the company started sales of its protein in the US last year.

"Remilk, which has raised more than $130 million in capital from investors to date, in July inked a large-scale commercial agreement with the Central Bottling Company (CBC Group), the exclusive Israeli franchisee of Coca-Cola, to roll out a line of dairy drinks, cheeses, and yogurts made with its protein, for the Israeli market within 12 months pending the regulatory approval.

"There are a number of companies operating in the dairy alternative space for milk proteins using precision fermentation technology, such as Israeli startup Imagindairy which says its technology recreates nature-identical, animal-free versions of whey and casein proteins that can be used to produce dairy duplicates. Another one is Pigmentum, which has developed a gene-modified plant-based technology to create milk proteins from lettuce that can be used to make cheese."