Last year, The Vegetarian Butcher founders Jaap Korteweg and Niko Koffeman created Those Vegan Cowboys, a company aimed at producing real milk without the cow. Now, they say they’re developing animal-free casein.
Danone North America Supports Innovation Challenge Around Properties of Casein to Improve Vegan Cheese
Danone North America is partnering with Future Food Tech to launch an innovation challenge aimed at improving the properties of vegan cheese. Startups are invited to develop innovative solutions, including animal-free casein, to help solve for the functionality, including melt and stretch, of plant-based cheese alternatives. Casein is a milk protein that gives cheese its stretching and melting properties. While many companies have tried to replicate its properties with plant-based ingredients, most attempts have fallen short. Danone hopes the development of animal-free casein could be one solution to improve the quality of plant-based cheeses, though the company has no plans to change its current product manufacturing process. Precision fermentation technology has already made it possible to develop vegan versions of other milk proteins such as …