Product viability

How much cheese protein will we be able to make per liter? How much will it cost? Can we estimate the final production cost of the vegan cheese? How does it compare to existing vegan cheese and normal cheese products?

We can probably sell some quantity of the cheese almost no matter how much it costs. There are cheeses that cost more than $500 per pound and people apparently still buy them. However, if we want to compete with normal and vegan cheese, I don't think we can go much higher than $20 a pound.

So let's say that we have a viable product if we can sell the cheese for less than $20 per pound. Gouda cheese has a protein content of about 25% per weight, so we have to produce 1 pound of cheese protein for less than $80. That is $0.1754 per gram of protein. This is without counting the other ingredients and the cheesemaking and aging process.

"A high hCMP concentration of 2.5 g/l was obtained in a fed-batch bioreactor operation."
-- Production of human caseinomacropeptide in recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia pastoris - Yu-Jin et al.

Assuming we can get 2.5 g/l of a mix of the four required caseins, that is a price of $0.4385 per liter. Compare with milk which has ~8 g/l protein (some portion of this is lost in the whey. how much?) where we'd be able to pay more like $1.3 per liter (almost $5 per gallon) and get the same amount of protein.

Thus, to stay below $20 a pound it must cost us less than $438 to run a 1000 liter batch-fed bioreactor, purify the protein, add other ingredients and make and age the cheese. Honestly I have no idea what it costs to run a 1000 liter bioreactor. We are also comparing retail cheese prices and production cost, which is not really realistic.

Cost of running a bioreactor

Here is an estimate from plant cell cultures stating a cost of $500 per kg of isolate with 1 g/l production over 15 days. We'll have to do more research to see how that works out for yeast and how that number changes when g/l is increased.

Comparison with in vitro meat

"Vat grown" meat has already attracted tons of publicity and funding. As a novelty item, you can probably charge an astronomical price for a hamburger of engineered meat. With the right marketing, the same could be true for engineered cheese.

At least for the first several years, we will *not* be competing with conventionally produced cheese. We would be producing a novelty product that can easily demand a significantly higher price.

• http://www.geekosystem.com/3d-printed-meat-modern-meadow/
• http://www.nbcnews.com/health/diet-fitness/lab-grown-meat-here-will-vegetarians-eat-it-f6C10830536
• http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/science/engineering-the-325000-in-vitro-burger.html
• http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/dutch-scientists-grow-first-vitro-pork
• http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90235492
• http://tcaproject.org/projects/victimless
• http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_specter
• http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/first-reaction-lab-made-burger-lacks-flavor/2618599/
• http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/google-sergey-brin-synthetic-beef-hamburger
• http://modernmeadow.com/
• http://www.new-harvest.org/
• http://www.invitromeat.org/

ToDo

• Find cost of bulk milk for cheesemaking. What do current cheesemakers pay?
• Find cost of running bioreactors
• Figure out retail vs. production cost cheese markups
• Estimate costs of other cheese ingredients
• Find costs of existing vegan cheese products
• Find cost of cheesemaking