Bored Cow Synthetic Milk: Should You Be Drinking It? Read And Decide

Is Synthetic Biology Milk Safe?

You will likely see more products like Bored Cow that claim to be better for the world, arguing that they use 96% less land, up to 67% less water, and emit up to 44% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, but is it that flawless, and should we be consuming them? Read on, and you decide…

A laboratory recently discovered 92 unknown compounds in the alternative dairy product Bored Cow, produced using a “precision fermentation” process that involves the use of genetic engineering.

Molecules unknown to science

Iowa-based Health Research Institute (HRI) tested a Bored Cow product, which is described as “a milk alternative made with milk protein from fermentation instead of cows.” Using full spectrum molecular analysis technology, HRI found 92 small molecules in the product that are unknown to science, according to John Fagan, chief science officer at HRI. “They’re completely novel to our food,” he says. “They are things that we haven’t consumed as human beings.”

Fagan scanned scientific literature and databases to determine whether the molecules had nutritional or other beneficial properties and found nothing.

“I couldn’t even find the scientific name for the vast majority of the molecules present in the Bored Cow product. They are nutritional dark matter,” Fagan says.

The unknown molecules could be nutrients or waste products generated during the fermentation process. Of the latter, Fagan says: “You don’t necessarily want them in your food.”

By contrast, the compounds in cow’s milk like vitamins, minerals, sugars, and carbohydrates are well known to be safe and nutritious, Fagan says.

HRI’s testing also found residues of a fungicide at a substantial level. Fagan thinks it may have been added to the fermentation process to prevent the growth of microorganisms during the production of the diary protein. But the fungicide carried over into the Bored Cow milk. Fungicides are used in agriculture to kill fungi. HRI tests foods for pesticide residues.

GMO DNA not removed

Bored Cow milk alternative is made with an animal-free whey dairy protein from Perfect Day, which uses a synthetic biology process called “precision fermentation” to make the protein. This involves taking a gene for whey protein and putting it into a genetically engineered yeast. Bored Cow and Perfect Day use the term “microflora” to avoid using “genetically engineered” or “GMO.” The GMO yeast is then put into stainless steel fermentation tanks with sugar or high fructose corn syrup, water, and nutrients. The additional ingredients help the yeast grow and produce the protein. The GMO yeast is then filtered out, leaving the milk protein, which is purified and dried. Bored Cow then takes the milk protein, and adds vitamins, minerals, sugar, and other ingredients to give it the flavor and consistency of real milk.

Bored Cow milk is “strikingly different” from real milk

Perfect Day and Bored Cow both claim the milk protein is identical to the protein in cow’s milk but HRI’s tests found that the protein in Bored Cow’s milk was mostly from the GMO yeast and not the milk protein.

Both Perfect Day and Bored Cow claim their synbio products aren’t GMOs because the GMO-derived “microflora” or yeast is removed during the fermentation process. Fagan calls that “wishful thinking.”

“The (genetically engineered) DNA in these products is broken up or fragmented but is certainly still there,” Fagan says. The presence of GMO DNA in Bored Cow and other synbio products would mean that they would have to be labeled under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Bioengineered Food Disclosure law. Right now, such products don’t require labeling.

No safety testing

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require safety testing of the Bored Cow product or other synbio food products. But in Europe and Canada, the synbio milk—with its 92 unknown compounds—would be considered a novel food product and need to be safety tested before going on the market.

“These products have gone on the market without the FDA requiring safety assessments of these compounds,” Fagan says. “There needs to be long term safety tests before these products are put on the market.”

Bored Cow’s products are being sold in retail supermarket and natural food chains such as Sprouts Farmers Market.

More climate friendly?

Synbio companies claim their products are more sustainable and climate-friendly. But Errol Schweizer, partner of food and agriculture at Impakt, IQ, asks several important questions about precision fermentation in an article in Forbes: How much waste material will be produced from the synbio process and how will it be disposed of? How does the energy and resource usage of such products compare to competing animal-based items? Also, how can the use of high fructose corn syrup as a feedstock be sustainable when corn production in the U.S. is energy intensive and polluting?

According to Fagan, the synthetic biology industry is being promoted on a flawed assumption. Investors in synbio companies—which are being fueled by billions of dollars in venture capital—are being told that synbio products like Bored Cow are created like software; that it’s just a matter of programming the DNA like a computer. An article in FoodNavigator USA even describes GMO yeasts being “programmed” to produce proteins. The problem is that the internal functioning of even the simplest organisms like a yeast is vastly more complex than computer programs.

“It is a hollow analogy because it implies that you have the same kind of precise control in synthetic biology that you have programming a computer. It’s much more complex,” Fagan says. “Here we have an example of 92 unpredicted compounds being produced, and only a trace of the whey protein that you really want. It’s nothing like precision.”

*article adapted from The Organic & Non-GMO Report by Ken Roseboro