Opalia’s animal-free milk is now one step closer to supermarket shelves
Introducing a new era of dairy
There are many choices for consumers who want to substitute cow's milk with an animal-free alternative, including a wide variety of nut-based milks as well as milk made by fermentation of microflora such as fungi. But for those who want an animal-free milk that tastes and performs functionally like real cow's milk—and that can be made into cheese and other dairy products—the range of options is disappointing.
But that’s set to change. A Canadian startup called Opalia is on track to perfect real cow's milk that doesn't involve any animals. And, next week, the company will announce that it has reached a key milestone on the road to attaining that goal, placing it one step closer to scaling up in the lab and proving its cost and quality goals.
Opalia was founded in September 2020 by Jennifer Côté and Lucas House. They were doing their best to limit their impact on the planet by adopting a vegan diet. But what they didn’t like was buying $13 plant-based cheeses that tasted like lemon or plastic.
They dreamed that, one day, they would be able to enjoy a really delicious pizza covered in cheese that actually tastes like cheese. And so they formed Opalia with the goal of developing a dairy alternative that would not taste or feel like an alternative. To achieve that goal, the science team focused on using mammary cells from cows to produce the real cow’s milk without any of the negative consequences for our planet associated with dairy livestock production.
A major lab milestone
Today, Opalia announced that the team has completely eliminated the use of any animal by-products during its cell culture process. By replacing bovine fetal serum (which is commonly used to cultivate cells in a lab) with a custom-engineered substrate, Opalia can now culture its mammary cells in its bioreactor in an entirely animal-free production process.Opalia will therefore emerge as the only cell-based milk startup focused exclusively on optimizing cell-based milk production for the dairy market.
Read the press release:
“By successfully replacing FBS with a cheaper, non-animal-derived cell growth substrate, we have reduced the cost and risk of manufacturing cell-based milk, bringing Opalia one step closer to introducing consumers to no-compromises, animal-free dairy. Our new FBS replacement substrate enables us to reliably grow our mammary cells to cost-effectively scale up production of sustainable and fully functional animal-free milk.”
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