he glass of froth-topped coffee being offered by Perumal Gandhi looks like any other latte you might enjoy during a morning stop at a café. Except, the milk in this cup did not come from a cow – it was produced by fungi.
Gandhi and his fellow bioengineer Ryan Pandya, who are the co-founders of a start-up called Perfect Day, equip fungi with gene sequences used by cows to produce certain milk proteins, such as whey protein. Rather than taking DNA from a cow, they use already-decoded genes for the milk proteins, and insert those genes into fungi. In a fermentation process, the fungi then produce the proteins. The resulting product can be used to create a liquid with similar properties to animal milk, or to make animal-free ice creams or cream cheeses.
It is one of a growing number of attempts to find alternative ways of producing food without using animals – known as cellular agriculture. The idea is to produce meat, milk or other animal products without needing to rear, slaughter and butcher livestock. Growing food this way could be kinder to the planet, too.
Livestock alone makes up around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The food industry as a whole accounts for a third of our carbon emissions. Putting food into the mouths of billions of people every day is a monumental task and one that is likely to get even greater as human populations increase. From deforestation to transport, waste management to food storage, each step of the food chain brings with it a high carbon footprint.
If the world is to meet the ambition of reaching net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century as outlined in the Paris Agreement on climate change, the food industry is going to have to play its part. How might the food we eat change as 2050 draws near?
Gandhi and Pandya, who are based in Berkley, California, hope they might be part of the solution. Other scientists around the world are similarly hoping to produce foods that imitate meat and dairy in the laboratory.