Brown Foods Unveils First Lab-Made Whole Cow Milk Product
Boston-based Brown Foods, a Y Combinator-backed startup company, has unveiled UnReal Milk, which it claims is the first lab-made whole cow milk. UnReal Milk is said to match the taste, texture and nutrition of conventional cow’s milk, and also can be transformed into butter, cheese, ice cream and other dairy products — without the cows.
Subsequent to our first posting of this news, Senara GmbH of Germany sent us a email claiming to have been producing cultivated cow milk for more than a year.
Brown Foods uses biotechnology through mammalian cell cultures to produce the milk, and the product contains the protein, fat and carbohydrates that conventional cow milk provides. The company has produced the first test tube of lab-grown milk, but it says the technology can be scaled up to use bioreactors and produce much larger volumes of milk for human consumption. The Brown Foods announcement noted that various startups have been trying for more than six years to produce lab-made whole milk, and other attempts have fallen short on protein, fat and carbohydrate content, until now.
Independent third-party analysis by the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, affiliated with MIT, confirmed the presence of all key dairy proteins, including: Alpha-S1-Casein, Alpha-S2-Casein, Beta Casein, Kappa Casein, Alpha-lactalbumin, Beta-lactoglobulin, Lactotransferrin and Albumin. Brown Foods said it also has verified that UnReal Milk contains the same milk fats (majorly triglycerides) and carbohydrates as traditional dairy.
Brown Foods estimates that its UnReal Milk product would have an estimated 82% lower carbon footprint than conventional whole cow milk, and ould use 90% less water and 95% less land. It also eliminates animal handling and care from production chain concerns.
Brown Foods was founded in 2021, and it has targeted late 2025 for its first consumer tastings of what it is calling UnReal Milk version 2.0 (the current product is 1.0), followed by a market pilot in late 2026.
Version 2.0, the announcement noted, will deliver a more refined product — the current process produces milk in a liquid solution from which it must be extracted, the company said. That means some of the solution remains in the milk — an issue the company says will be completely removed in version 2.0.
