Cellular agriculture · Cultivated dairy
Brown Foods
A Boston and India company growing bovine mammary cells in bioreactors to make whole cow milk, and now saying it has done the same with human milk. What exists in public is a test tube, a protein panel and a launch date. No regulator anywhere has cleared cell cultured milk for sale.
One test tube, held up to a camera
On February 25, 2025, Bhavna Tandon, chief scientific officer of Brown Foods, stood in the company’s Boston lab holding a test tube of white liquid. The company called it the world’s first lab-made whole cow milk.
No cow was involved. Brown Foods takes bovine mammary epithelial cells, the cells that line the udder, and keeps them alive in a bioreactor under conditions that trigger them to lactate. The cells secrete proteins, fats and carbohydrates as they would inside an animal.
That is a different bet from most of the field. Perfect Day and Remilk use precision fermentation: a cow gene goes into a yeast, one protein is brewed, and plant fats and sugars fill in the rest. Brown Foods argues the cell already knows the whole recipe. Mammary cells, Sohail Gupta told Fast Company in 2022, “have evolved naturally over centuries to produce milk in mammals.”
The volume shown was a test tube. This was version 1.0, and the milk still had to be extracted from the growth medium it was made in, with some of that medium still present. Version 2.0, the company said, would remove the rest.
Why anyone is trying
Gupta’s framing, given to Forbes in February 2025, puts three problems together: “When it comes to dairy, cattle farming accounts for 30% of global methane emissions, while supply chain adulteration remains a major problem.”
Plant milks took the shelf space but not the function. Cell cultured milk, if it works at volume, sits in the same product slot as the real thing.
Three friends from IIT Delhi
Gupta, Tandon and Avhijeet Kapoor met as undergraduates at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi almost two decades ago. Gupta did a B.Tech and M.Tech there and studied Biodesign at Stanford. He has been vegetarian all his life, and when his wife was pregnant the couple could not find a milk alternative that was nutritious, low carbon and cruelty free at once. Tandon holds a PhD in molecular biology from Rice University.
They founded Brown Foods in 2021. Inside the first three months of experimental work, the company says, they secreted cow milk in a lab. They went through Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch, and on June 9, 2022 announced a $2.36 million seed round from Y Combinator, AgFunder, SRI Capital, Amino Capital, Collaborative Fund and angels including Kunal Shah. TechCrunch reported the company as pre-revenue.
What moved between 2022 and 2026
Two claims have moved since the seed round.
The first is carbon. In 2022, Brown Foods and its coverage put UnReal Milk at a 90% smaller carbon footprint than conventional dairy. From February 2025 onward the figure is 82% lower carbon, with 90% less water and 95% less land. No life cycle assessment supports either number.
The second is the product order. The February 2025 plan was consumer tasting in late 2025 with version 2.0, then a market pilot in late 2026. AgFunder, a seed investor, puts it differently on its portfolio page: UnReal Milk “is launching with cheese and will expand to milk as costs decline.” Cheese first is a cost decision. Cheese absorbs a unit cost that fluid milk cannot, because it sells at many times the price per litre of input. Brown Foods has never published a cost per litre, in any year.
By November 2025, reporting had moved ahead of the pilot. The Daily Mail and AGDAILY described a 2026 US retail launch, public taste tests already running, and a regulatory position built on self-affirmed GRAS rather than an FDA review.
The human milk turn
Brown Foods has since added a second product. Its Y Combinator page carries a launch post for UnReal Human Milk, saying the team has secreted real human milk in the lab, validated the proteins through third party testing, and tested fats and carbohydrates to make what it calls a basic version. “By using mammalian cell culture we have designed a system to produce human milk in lab with a macronutrient focus currently,” the post says. The same page names the $80 billion infant formula market.
Nothing about that is close to an infant feeding product, and the regulatory distance is larger than the scientific one. In the United States, infant formula is not governed by the GRAS pathway at all. It sits under section 412 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and 21 CFR parts 106 and 107, which impose new formula notification, quality factor demonstration, set nutrient levels and recall requirements. Nothing from Brown Foods has entered that process. Biomilq, working on cell cultured human milk since 2019, put the limit plainly through co-founder Leila Strickland: “It’s not bio-identical to mother’s milk, we’re not confident it can be.”
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| FDA GRAS inventory | Searches on Sep 23, 2026 for Brown Foods, mammary and cultured bovine each return zero records. Perfect Day holds GRN 863, closed Mar 25, 2020 with an FDA has no questions letter; TurtleTree holds GRN 1219, closed May 7, 2025 with the same letter. | Public record |
| Self-affirmed GRAS | Reported Nov 2025 that the company says it has a green light because it is self-affirming its own safety data. Self affirmation is lawful but is not an FDA review and yields no FDA letter. | Independent |
| Protein analysis | Company says a third party analysis by MIT’s affiliated Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research confirmed eight dairy proteins in version 1.0: four caseins, alpha-lactalbumin, beta-lactoglobulin, lactotransferrin and albumin. The institute has issued no statement of its own. | Company-stated |
| Volume and cost | One test tube, Feb 25, 2025. No volume, titre, yield or cost per litre published. | Not found |
| Environmental claim | 2022: a 90% smaller carbon footprint. 2025 onward: 82% lower carbon, 90% less water, 95% less land. No life cycle assessment. | Claim changed |
| Approvals anywhere | As of March 2026, no cultivated dairy product had been approved for sale in any market anywhere. | Independent |
| US state law | Mississippi enacted the first US ban on cultivated dairy, effective July 1, 2026. | Independent |
| SEC record | No Form D, no EDGAR registrant. | Public record |
| Human milk | Company states it has secreted real human milk and validated proteins by third party testing, calling it a basic version. No publication, no filing. | Company-stated |
| Infant formula | Regulated under section 412 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and 21 CFR 106 and 107. No Brown Foods product is in it. | Public record |
Read plainly: the science claim is narrow, and the company has been precise about it. Mammary cells were kept alive, induced to secrete, and a protein panel came back with the expected caseins and whey proteins. That is a real result. Everything past it is unverified: no volume, no cost, no peer reviewed paper, no regulator that has looked at the file, no product on sale anywhere. A 2026 retail launch resting on self affirmation is a commercial decision, not a safety finding.
What to watch
- Whether a GRAS notice ever appears in the FDA inventory. A no questions letter would be the first hard regulatory milestone here.
- Whether the first product is cheese or milk, and at what price. Cheese first would confirm unit cost is still the binding constraint.
- Any published volume or cost figure, from anyone. Five years of claims contain none.
- The human milk line, and whether the company holds the line between a food ingredient and an infant feeding claim.
In their words
“We validated for the major macronutrients, the proteins, the fats and the carbs.”
Sohail Gupta, co-founder and CEO, to TechCrunch, 2022 · Independent
“When it comes to dairy, cattle farming accounts for 30% of global methane emissions, while supply chain adulteration remains a major problem.”
Sohail Gupta, to Forbes, 2025 · Independent
“Unlike precision fermentation, the key strength of Brown Foods’ technology approach is that it uses mammalian cell culture which enables them to produce all components of milk together as whole milk”
Richard Braatz, MIT chemical engineering professor and company scientific adviser, company release, 2025 · Company release
“Though we are starting with cow milk, using our technology we can produce milk of any mammalian species, including human milk”
Sohail Gupta, to Forbes, 2025 · Independent
“It’s not bio-identical to mother’s milk, we’re not confident it can be.”
Leila Strickland, co-founder, Biomilq, to FoodNavigator-USA, 2021 · Independent
“Given the current federal political climate, it’s anyone’s guess whether UnReal Milk will be greenlighted any time soon.”
Dave Dickey, columnist, Investigate Midwest, 2025 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordFDA GRAS Notice Inventory searches, plus GRN 863 and GRN 1219 detail pages
- Public recordInfant Formula Guidance Documents and Regulatory Information
- Public recordSEC EDGAR company and full text searches for Brown Foods and UnReal Milk
- IndependentBrown Foods raises $2.36M for cowless cow’s milk
- IndependentThis startup is milking cow cells in a lab for animal-free dairy
- IndependentCell-cultured human milk, says BIOMILQ
- InvestorUnReal Milk portfolio page
- IndependentUnReal Milk, will it do a body good?
- IndependentFirst Entirely Lab-Grown Whole Milk To Debut In The U.S.
- IndependentOutrage builds as Franken-milk prepares to hit stores
- IndependentCell-cultured UnReal Milk hits U.S. taste buds as FDA shortcut draws ire
- IndependentMississippi Becomes First US State to Ban Cell-Cultured Dairy
- CompanyThe World’s First Lab-Made Whole Cow Milk is Here
- CompanyBrown Foods company page and UnReal Human Milk launch post
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
