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In their Montreal laboratory, two entrepreneurs [Lucas House (left) and Jennifer Côté (right)] are aiming for the firmament, or rather the Milky Way: they want to “cultivate” real milk without milking a single cow. This is the only way, according to them, to supplant the traditional dairy industry, which warms the climate and exploits animals.

A Montreal company intends to market milk made from cells. The first tests are conclusive, but production in industrial quantities is not for tomorrow.

Held from May 23 to 24, The first Quebec Climate Solutions Festival has announced its winners, handing out a total of $300,000 in prize money to five innovators, entrepreneurs and researchers making strides in clean and climate technology. The largest award, the $100,000 start-up prize, went to Opalia, the first Canadian company to make milk without cows.

Opalia, an early-stage foodtech company that makes whole milk using mammary cells, has reached a crucial in-lab milestone on its path toward commercialization of animal-free cow’s milk. Today, Opalia announced the elimination of fetal bovine serum (FBS), a commonly used component of synthetic cell growth, from its manufacturing process.

Opalia, an early-stage foodtech company that makes whole milk by using mammary cells, announced a breakthrough that makes it possible to eliminate fetal bovine serum (FBS) from its cell-based manufacturing process.

If churning out milk from lactating bovine mammary epithelial cells in a bioreactor seems a bit, well, unnatural, ask yourself what’s ‘natural’ about the life of a dairy cow in an industrial-scale dairy farming operation, says Opalia co-founder Jennifer Côté, who got into the emerging field of cell-cultured milk for ‘deeply personal’ reasons.

FBS comes from the placenta of pregnant cows, making it a controversial ingredient in products that are intended to be animal-free. The serum is also expensive, prone to contamination, and highly variable between batches. But now, Opalia has found a replacement substrate that is FDA-approved, making its cell-based milk more ethical and potentially speeding up the process of regulatory approval.

Montreal-based Opalia has announced that is has successfully produced cell-based milk without the use of fetal bovine serum (FBS). The startup has already secured $1 million in pre-seed funding, with a seed round now in progress for continued R&D and projected scaling costings.