Australia’s Food Ministers have agreed to work to amend policy guidance to ensure regulation of cell-based human milk products is consistent with ‘traditional’ infant formula products.
The Ministers made the decision on 3 May after receiving an issues paper which considers regulatory framework aspects of cell-based human milk.
‘Cell-based human milk products’ refers to novel food products that aim to replicate human breast milk or breast milk components, either through cell culture or precision fermentation, which combines traditional fermentation with the latest biotechnology to efficiently produce novel food materials such as dairy proteins or fats.
As cell-based human milk products will serve the same population as infant formula products, the Ministers considered it appropriate that both products are subject to the same regulatory principles.
Australia’s Me& Food Tech markets itself as the world’s first company to be developing cell-based human milk products that provide functional nutrition to vulnerable babies.
Meanwhile, US-based start-up Yali Bio recently claimed to have created the world’s first human bioidentical breast milk fat. The firm says its researchers used precision fermentation to coax the yeast into producing a fat that is naturally found in high concentrations in breast milk and helps infants to absorb critical nutrients.
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