Counter Culture Labs takes its name pretty literally. It is a bio lab, for sure, complete with pipettes, carboys, microscopes, and flasks. But it is decidedly counter to the traditional culture of laboratory science. The DIY tinkerers who hang out here—in the back of a sprawling space that used to house a heavy metal club in Oakland, California—are working beyond conventional notions of inquiry and research. Their goal is nothing less than to hack nature.
The movement self-consciously compares itself to the homebrew digital pioneers of the 1970s, who wrested digital technology out of academia and business and into the wider realm of the amatuers. It’s open to anyone with an idea.
An idea like Real Vegan Cheese.
The possibilities include not just vegan cow cheese, but, well, vegan human cheese. The same basic process for synthesizing cow’s milk applies to milk from any other mammal. You just need different genes. Cheese made from engineered human breast milk may not sound like a top seller at the deli counter. But the team says it can serve a practical purpose: Human milk cheese could offer an option to people who have allergies to non-human dairy products. (Chavez said the group has put its experiments with human milk on hold due to Food and Drug Administration concerns about possible autoimmune reactions.)
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They also hope to engineer cheese based on the milk of the narwhal, the most outlandish mammal they could imagine. They hear the milk has the consistency of toothpaste.
Read full, original article: Cow Milk Without the Cow Is Coming to Change Food Forever
