Startups are producing real dairy without a cow in sight

IT LOOKS LIKEGFI cheese. It smells like cheese. It tastes like cheese (specifically mature cheddar). And it is cheese—at least under the microscope. “Synthetic dairy” is made with the same ingredients as the conventional sort. But instead of getting the main ingredient from a live ruminant, Better Dairy, a three-year-old British cheesemaker, derives some of it from yeast. These microbes are fed sugar, which they then convert into milk proteins in a process which is similar to brewing.Plenty of milk have hit café counters and supermarket shelves in recent years. Plant-based beverages made from things like soyabeans, almonds and oats make up 15% of all milk sales by value in America and 11% in western Europe, reckons the Good Food Institute (), a think-tank. Yet lovers of real dairy, which plant-derived products cannot quite mimic, still need cows, goats and ewes. “Precision fermentation” companies like Better Dairy hope to change that—and take a fat slice of the $900bn global dairy market.