A California-based biotechnology startup has officially launched the world’s first commercially available butter made entirely from carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, eliminating the need for traditional agriculture or animal farming. Savor, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, announced the commercial release of its animal- and plant-free butter after three years of development.
The revolutionary product uses a proprietary thermochemical process that transforms carbon dioxide captured from the air, hydrogen from water, and methane into fat molecules chemically identical to those found in dairy butter. According to the company, the process creates fatty acids by heating these gases under controlled temperature and pressure conditions, then combining them with glycerol to form triglycerides.
Why is this uplifting news?
It could eliminate billions of animal deaths.
I didn’t know you had to kill an animal to make butter.
Read about the veal industry, because it’s a natural product of the milk (and butter) industry. To produce milk year round, dairy cows are inseminated (generally artificially as its more controlled and efficient than by stud), in order to keep them pregnant or with calf all year. The male calves are ‘unwanted coproduct’ and either culled immediately, or sent off to veal farms, some are fed for a few hours or weeks then slaughtered as ‘bob veal’, infant veal.
The only way to consume cows milk & butter without an animal dying for it would be to find a super niche ‘ethical dairy farm’ that raises cows for dairy only (not veal), and does not slaughter ‘excess’ infant cows or heifers that have gotten too old and been retired (usually they head off to the slaughterhouse also). If you find such a place, contrats you’ve found a unicorn - enjoy your ethical milk.
https://watchdominion.org/
You can skip directly to the part dedicated to dairy if you can’t stomach it all.
At scale, you indirectly do. The cows need to be pregnant or recently pregnant to produce milk, which means a lot more cattle than you want as their population grows. The solution is to cull the herd by turning them into meat products so they don’t destroy your fields.
And conditions in an industrial dairy are fairly fuckin bleak too