Whether it’s from moral reasons, environmental, or health, many around the world realize that there is a need to reduce our consumption of animal products.

This notion has ignited the acceleration of alternative meat products with developments like those coming from globally renowned companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, in addition to more than a few Israeli startups emerging from the cultured meat market, such as Redefine Meat and MeaTech 3D among others.

However, at the same time, the dairy industry has kind of been left behind, with alternative plant-based products that don’t quite resemble the real thing. Israeli startup Remilk develops real dairy products that are identical to the ones we get in the supermarket, only zero cows had to suffer to get them there.

Zero lactose, zero cholesterol, zero hormones and forget about antibiotics

Behind Remilk’s potentially game-changing technology hides an ancient practice - fermentation. The same fermentation process that’s used for wine, beer, and bread is harnessed to recreate the alternative protein. In a conversation with Geektime CEO Aviv Wolff explains that dairy protein is the nutritional and technical base for producing various dairy products: “To simplify it, we basically “teach” microorginasims (like yeast) to produce through fermentation similar milk protein just like you would get from a cow,” explains Wolff.

While one liter of milk requires on average about 1,000 liters of water, Wolff claims that Remilk’s process needs only 10% of the required water amount, and only 1% of the required land to produce milk. If that’s not enough to convince you, then Wolff further notes that the company’s products “contains no lactose whatsoever,” which is responsible for allergic reactions in humans. In addition, Remilk’s cowless dairy product contains no cholesterol, hormones, or antibiotics - in contrast to milk from dairy cows.

“For the first time we can create the ideal milk product that is healthy and highly nutritional,” Wolff proudly explains. Although, don’t expect to find products containing Remilk’s milk products on the supermarket shelves anytime soon. Wolff says that the products are still in the development stage, despite initial tasting tests going over successfully.

According to Wolff, once the company succeeds in recreating the same cow protein, but without milking the animals, then it will be successful in recreating all the nutritional characteristics of milk, without the environment and moral cost. Wolff even tells us that you won’t be able to tell the difference in taste, texture, or nutritional value.

Remilk also announced recently a $11.3 million funding round, led by fresh.fund. The round also saw participation from ProVeg, CPT Capital, OurCrowd, Tnuva, Tempo, Germany’s Hochland SE, and a number of private investors. The company intends on using the capital to further expand production and distribution, in an effort to reduce manufacturing costs and consumer price. “We are working towards improving the production process in order to market the products at competitive milk market prices,” states Wolff.

Remilk was founded by CEO Aviv Wolff and CTO Ori Cohavi, and currently employs a team of 15 in one of Israel’s many tech hubs.