Ep. 29: TurtleTree Labs

What do you get when you combine a Google leader, a dairy industry executive, and an engineer? Apparently, if you're in Singapore, you get a new startup producing real cow's milk-- without the cow: TurtleTree Labs.

Rather than trying to turn plants into milky beverages like many alt-dairy companies are, and rather than using yeast to make certain components of cow's milk, like Perfect Day is doing, TurtleTree Labs is using bovine stem cells, expressing them as mammary glands, and producing whole cows' milk that they claim is a 1:1 match for milk that was squeezed from an actual udder.

The company got its start with three business-minded folks, including the former CFO of a well-known California dairy company called Clover Sonoma, thinking they were on to something. In fact, they're so convinced that their idea and execution will be a winner that they've already filed for several patents and have even put half a million of their own dollars into their startup.

So sit back and be inspired by their story as told by CEO Fengru Lin.

Discussed in this episode

• Past Business for Good interviews: Perfect Day episode and Shiok Meats episode
• How scientists helped give diabetics real human insulin without using human donors.
• How cheese cheese consumption drives milk production, even when fluid milk consumption is down.

The documentary series "Genius." (It's called American Genius for US viewers.)