Mega Factories Target Cow-Free Milk and Cheese to Plug Shortage
- Precision fermentation has relied on old pharmaceutical plants
- Nascent technologies are in need of scaled-up manufacturing
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A new generation of alternative proteins promises to win over skeptical consumers by making cow-free dairy taste like the real thing. The trouble is there’s a dearth of factories needed to make them.
The shortage is being plugged by startups building facilities that cater to precision fermentation, a technology cultivating microbes to produce milk proteins found in animal products. That will mark a step shift in replacing the aging pharmaceutical sites that serve as production plants for new foods with large-scale manufacturing.