Vegetarian cheese with gen-manipulated rennet

[Guest guest]

> This is not true anymore. There are many different kinds of cheese without

> animal rennet, they use syntetic rennet or microbiological cultures of

> different kinds.

 

> There are so many vegetarians in our days, that the demand for pure veggi

> cheese became a good market for the manufactures. Here in Sweden, 10 years

> ago, there was one veggi cheese, now there are many.

 

The factual reason for having many cheeses without animal rennet is that the

demand for rennet is bigger than the supply.

 

1995 there where 14 000 tons of cheese produced. In order to extract enough

rennet for this amount of cheese (140 000 tons of milk) you need the

stomachs of 70 million calfs.

 

The coagulating ingredient of rennet is the enzyme "Chymosin" and the world

demand in 1995 was 56 tons. Until the mid seventies the rennet from calfs

stomachs was sufficient but then the demand for cheese exceeded the supply

of calf rennet.

 

There is an alternative from cow (not calf) stomach but this is of inferior

quality.

 

An other alternative is an enzyme produced by bread fungus. The brand names

for the enzyme from this fungus are: Fromase, Hannilase and Modilase.

 

The Chymosin which is used for coagulating most "vegetarian" cheeses is

produced from gen-manipulated microorganisms such as the bacteria

Escherichia coli K12, the fungus Aspergillus niger or the yeast

Kluyveromyces marxianus.

 

The brand names and producers of Chymosin from gen-manipulated

(bio-technology) microorganisms:

 

TRADE NAME: --------------- PRODUCER:

Chymogen -------------------- Christian Hansen (Dk)

Chymax ------------------------ Pfizer (USA)

Maxiren ------------------------ Gist-brocades (NL)

 

The first Chymosin from gen manipulated organisms on the marked was Chymax

from Pfizer which was allowed on the American market in 1990 by the FDA. By

1996 60% percent of the hard cheese in the USA where already produced with

gen-manipulated Chymosin.

 

Since 1997 all 3 brands of Chymosin are also available in Germany, which

until then had a special regulation regarding rennet.

 

> So, here in the west, there is no problem anymore to get "bonafide"

> cheese. ys Palika

 

Natural rennet contains not only Chymosin but also other substances which

add aroma to the cheese. For this reason many ready to use enzyme mixtures

which are used by the cheese industry contain vegetarian Chymosin plus

extracts from cow and calf stomachs.

 

This makes it even more difficult to determine whether a cheese is REALLY

vegetarian or not.

 

Ys Ud