Artificial Milk
In the dairy industry, the main resource currently used is cow’s milk. In 2009, the dairy industry spent 7.5 billion dollars on raw milk purchased from dairy farms (NZIER, 2010). Currently, butter production relies heavily on the availability of cow’s milk. Therefore, any changes to the milk will have a considerable affect to the production of butter. Shifting from cow’s milk to artificial milk could have severe impacts on both the dairy industry and butter production.
Best case: New Zealand shifts to artificial milk and has well equipped labs producing artificial milk for the dairy industry at lower costs.
Worst case: Countries around the world start to produce artificial milk, thus, affecting the New Zealand dairy industry.
According to Wannan (2014), the dairy export industry worth 17.5 billion dollars, could face the threat of being impacted because of artificial milk. Muufri, the company behind the idea of artificial milk, believe no difference exists between cow’s milk and milk made from yeasts in the lab. Muufri also states that artificial milk will be far cheaper than cow’s milk. However, Fonterra are not taking this seriously and believe this will be no competition. They believe this because it is difficult for artificial milk to be identical to cow’s milk. It is also a very complex job on a large scale. Furthermore, the prime industry minister also believes that artificial milk will not impose a huge threat as customers would still prefer the natural original milk (Wannan, 2014).
In an article, O’Callaghan (2014) discusses artificial milk and refers to Muufri Company. According to the three founders behind Muufri, within the next three years artificial milk will be available to the market. In addition, they also believe that in 100 years’ time, artificial milk will be the main milk on the market. Furthermore, they believe that artificial milk will be a healthier approach. For example, dairy farms will reduce negative consequences that they have on the environment such as greenhouse gases. Lastly, they state that everyone will benefit from this approach unless you are in charge of a dairy industry (O’Callaghan, 2014).
Similar to O’Callaghan, Sergel (2014) recognises that artificial milk may take over and in 100 years’ time all dairy milk will be replaced with milk which is made in labs. The reason for this is the advancements in technology being used in labs. On the other hand, Andrew Hoggard, chairman of the federated dairy farmers, believes this is not a concern as consumers will continue to demand the real deal. Nevertheless, he also mentions that there may be a market for artificial milk in the future (Sergel, 2014).
Conclusion:
To conclude, the research undertaken along with the sources currently available points me toward the belief that in the next 50 years, artificial milk will not replace dairy milk. It can be predicted that there is roughly a 70% chance that artificial milk will not replace dairy milk. The reason behind this is the limited research and information currently available on artificial milk. Of the information that was available it was only based on one company, Muufri. Muufri is run by three bio engineers with no real specialist in the team. The executives in the dairy and farm industry have expressed a lack of fear in regards to artificial milk. This implies that it may not be a problem in the future. However, there is still roughly a 30% chance that artificial milk could replace cow’s milk. Artificial milk entering the market cannot be ignored as it has been mentioned and captured interest in the media. Therefore, there is still a possibility that artificial milk may take over cow’s milk in the future.