Cow-Free Milk Sells in Israel as Pareve After Meat

By June 2026, Remilk and Gad Dairies had sold about 600,000 bottles of The New Milk, a cow-free milk built on fermented whey protein. Foodservice kegs and cartons had reached cafes, restaurants and hotels in November 2025, and the 3% fat and vanilla packs followed in supermarket coolers in January 2026.

The companies sold the drink as milk that froths, cooks, and tastes like the dairy aisle. The commercial edge in Israel is narrower, and stranger: the bottle is certified pareve, so a cappuccino after steak is no longer a kashrut problem.

600,000 Bottles Later, Israel Is Drinking It

Remilk, founded in 2019 by Aviv Wolff and biochemist Ori Cohavi, spent more than five years and over $150 million getting a yeast strain to secrete beta-lactoglobulin, the main whey protein in cow’s milk. A planned giant plant in Denmark was paused. A tie-up with Israeli dairy Tara did not proceed. Protein is now made for them in Spain, then mixed, pasteurized, and sent chilled to Gad for Israeli distribution.

THE ISRAEL TALLY THROUGH JUNE 2026

• Bottles sold: About 600,000 of The New Milk, per figures published with the company in September 2026.
• Sales value: Around NIS 7 million in that same window.
• Category share: Roughly 72% of Israel’s cow-free milk set, a small fridge still dominated by soy and oat.
• U.S. status: No full commercial launch had been announced as of August 2026, even with FDA clearance already in hand.

Those numbers are modest against a national dairy market, and they are large for a drink that did not exist on a mass shelf a year earlier. The first three packs were a barista milk for coffee bars, a 3% everyday milk, and a vanilla version, sold in 750 milliliter bottles listed at 15 shekels ($4.64) at launch. Wolff told interviewers in late 2025 that Israel would come first for six to nine months, with a U.S. partner as a 2026 aim. The partner was still not on the calendar by August.

Coffee After a Meat Meal, Finally Pareve

Wolff has said for years that vegans were not the target. In a 2020 interview, while Remilk was still showing mozzarella as a test, he said most people would think the company wanted an alternative for vegans, “but that is really not what we want.” The Israel launch put that line into a grocery plan.

Remilk and Gad hired Geocartography Knowledge Group to poll local drinkers. The survey found that 92% of Israelis drink cow’s milk and 61% drink milk alternatives, with 56% using both. Taste is the brake: 55% said plant milks are not tasty enough. The kosher split is the opening. Sixty-six percent keep meat and dairy apart, and 50% of that group said they would drink coffee with milk after a meat meal if a pareve milk tasted like the real thing.

Our new milk products are good news for many consumers who keep kosher and can now drink coffee with parve milk after a meat meal that tastes like real milk.

Aviv Wolff, co-founder and CEO of Remilk

A joint letter from Gad Dairy and Remilk management walks the same path in plain kitchen language: a meat meal, then dessert, then a cappuccino, all pareve. The bottle carries Mehadrin pareve kosher certification from Badatz Igud Rabbonim, with supervision from the strain onward, and it sits under the Chief Rabbinate as well. The letter is blunt about the catch that no marketing line can erase. The drink is pareve and lactose-free, and the protein is still a milk allergen because it is the same beta-lactoglobulin found in a cow.

Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weiss, who sits on the Chief Rabbinate’s kashrut committee, put the ruling in technician terms. The drink has the qualities of milk, he said, but it is not really milk. Asked if it is pareve and if it may be mixed with meat, he answered yes to both, and added that a feeling that this violates the spirit of the law is not something he can legislate. Some rabbis still warn about marit ayin, the problem of looking as if you are pouring dairy on meat, and they want the pack visible while it is used. That is a table-manners rule laid on top of a tank protein.

How Remilk Makes Milk Without a Cow

The method is precision fermentation, not a cultured udder. Scientists copy the genetic instructions for beta-lactoglobulin, put them into yeast, and feed the yeast sugar and nutrients in a tank. The yeast makes the protein, which is then filtered out, dried, and later folded into a drink with fat, water, and fortification. Remilk uses it as non-animal beta-lactoglobulin whey protein, and the firm told the FDA the extract is at least 80% that protein. In a cow, beta-lactoglobulin is about 65% of the whey and only a slice of total milk protein. There is no casein in this formula. The white color and the mouthfeel come in large part from shea fat and coconut fat, plus sugar, acidity regulators, flavors, stabilizers, salt, emulsifiers, calcium, vitamins D and E, and dietary fiber.

HOW THE PROTEIN BECOMES A BOTTLE

• The microbe: Engineered yeast (Komagataella phaffii) is grown on sugar and nutrients until it sheds whey protein.
• The powder: The protein is separated, purified, spray-dried, and packed for shipment to a dairy plant.
• The mix: A European co-packer, in Spain, recombines the powder with plant fats, water, sugar, and vitamins, then pasteurizes and homogenizes the drink.
• The fridge: Chilled finished goods move to Israel, where Gad puts them into foodservice and supermarket coolers.

Cohavi has said the drink foams like regular milk, tastes like milk, and behaves like milk in cooking. Remilk also claims the process emits up to 97% fewer greenhouse gases than ordinary milk, uses 99% less land, and needs over 90% less water. Those figures are the company’s own. What a buyer can check without a life-cycle study is the label: lactose-free, cholesterol-free, no animal antibiotics or growth hormones, and, the companies say, 75% less sugar than regular milk. The same protein still triggers a milk-allergy warning. Remilk’s own account said in 2023 that people allergic to milk cannot consume it, while people who only struggle with lactose can.

FROM STRAIN TO SHELF

1. 2019: Wolff and Cohavi found Remilk after a stint in Tel Aviv University’s JumpTAU program, aiming to keep milk proteins and drop the cow.
2. June 2022: Remilk declares its whey protein generally recognized as safe in the United States on a self-affirmed basis.
3. February 23, 2023: The company posts a no questions letter from FDA and Singapore Food Authority clearance on the same day.
4. 2023: Israel’s Ministry of Health clears the protein for sale, the first such approval in the country.
5. November 2025: Gad and Remilk open The New Milk in foodservice, with supermarket packs dated for January 2026.
6. January 2026: The 3% and vanilla bottles reach selected supermarket chains.
7. June 2026: About 600,000 bottles and around NIS 7 million in sales are on the books.

Canada is on the same clearance list as the United States, Israel, and Singapore. The protein is not cleared, in the U.S. notice, for infant formula. Europe is a different problem: dairy law there still guards the word milk for liquid that came from an udder, so the Israeli brand name would be a hard sell on an EU label even if the protein itself were allowed.

Gad Dairies Bottles a Rival to Its Own Cows

Gad is Israel’s fourth-largest dairy, a family brand whose business is still built on herds, vats, and a cold chain that already reaches the stores Remilk needed. The New Milk is a joint venture, not a white-label science experiment parked in a vegan aisle. Gad’s trucks and fridge space are the product. Amir Aharon, Gad’s CEO, called the launch a defining moment for the dairy category and a meeting of dairy tradition and new technology. That is a polite way of saying a cow dairy is now selling a drink that does not need a cow.

The partnership is the bet that precision fermentation would stall as a B2B powder. Remilk had piloted ingredients with large food companies, including a General Mills trial, then decided the hard work was turning one protein into a drink people would repurchase. Gad already knew how Israelis buy milk. The cost of that knowledge is obvious on a farm: every carton of pareve “milk” that follows a meat lunch is a carton that did not come from Gad’s own animals. The company is hedging its herd by bottling the thing that competes with it.

Shoppers who still want soy will keep buying soy. One recurring complaint after the bottles arrived is not foam or kosher status. It is the extra pantry of fats, gums, and fiber that a cow never listed. Identical whey is not the same as identical milk. The drink can be pareve, vegan-friendly, and a milk allergen at once, which is a grocery fact that sits badly with any slogan about purity.

A Rival Drink Beat Them to the Shelf

Remilk was not even first in the Israeli cooler. In September 2025, Strauss Group, working with Imagindairy, put CowFree on sale as a Yotvata CowFree drink and Symphony cheese spread, both using fermented beta-lactoglobulin. Strauss dairy chief Ariella Schiffenbauer Weiss framed it as another stage in the company’s dairy work. Group CEO Shai Babad later told investors that everything put on the market had sold, then warned that protein supply was still limited, so demand was hard to read. Imagindairy, which Strauss helped incubate, runs industrial tanks with more than 100,000 liters of fermentation capacity and has its own FDA no-questions letter.

TWO COW-FREE MILKS IN THE ISRAELI COOLER

Both lines use the same star protein and both warn milk-allergic people away. Remilk’s June 2026 share figure is for cow-free milk, not for cream cheese, and it suggests the Gad bottle took most of the liquid niche once it arrived. Strauss still has the earlier date stamp and a cheese SKU Remilk had only promised. Cohavi said yogurt and cream cheese were in the Israeli pipeline after the milk launch. Those packs were not part of the June 2026 bottle count.

What the Bottle Still Cannot Do

The New Milk can sit next to steak in a kosher kitchen. It cannot sit next to a milk-allergy card. It cannot call itself milk in much of Europe. It cannot, as of August 2026, be bought as a national U.S. brand, even though the protein already passed FDA review in 2023. And it cannot rebuild a full cheese vat the way a cow does, because this recipe is whey plus plant fat, not the casein scaffold that sets yogurt and cheddar.

HARD LIMITS ON THE CLAIM

• Allergy: Beta-lactoglobulin is a milk protein, so the pareve stamp does not make the drink safe for people with dairy-protein allergy.
• Fats: Shea and coconut replace milk fat; the protein is bioidentical, the rest of the recipe is not.
• Scale: Denmark’s giant plant was paused in favor of rented European capacity, which is faster and cheaper and leaves Remilk dependent on a co-packer.
• Name: Israeli shelves accept “The New Milk.” EU dairy law is unlikely to.

Online, the fight is less about foam and more about farms. Supporters treat the tank as a way to keep dairy foods without the herd. Critics treat the same tank as a slow replacement of ordinary milk by a few companies with yeast patents. That argument will not be settled by 600,000 bottles. What the bottles did settle is smaller. Israelis will buy a fermented whey drink if it pours like milk, and a large share of the country has a reason to buy it that has nothing to do with climate charts: they want coffee after meat, and they want it to taste like milk.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can people with lactose intolerance drink Remilk New Milk?

Yes. The finished drink has no lactose, and Remilk has said people who are sensitive to lactose can use products based on its protein. The U.S. GRAS notice still bars the ingredient from infant formula, which is a separate rule from adult lactose use, and anyone with a milk-protein allergy is told to stay away.

Which kosher authorities certify The New Milk as pareve?

Year-round Mehadrin pareve supervision is from Badatz Igud Rabbonim, the body founded by Rabbi Osher Yaakov Westheim and now led by Rabbi Landa, with Rabbi Shmuel Eidelman on the account. For Passover, the companies said they would run a dedicated production, keeping Badatz Igud Rabbonim for year-round use and adding Badatz Beit Yosef for people who eat kitniyot on Passover.

Does cow-free New Milk contain casein?

No. Remilk’s commercial protein is beta-lactoglobulin only, the main whey protein, not the caseins that make up most of cow’s milk protein and that set traditional cheese. The white body of the drink is built with shea and coconut fat, which is why the bottle can be pareve and still look like milk.

Where is The New Milk manufactured?

The whey protein is fermented, dried, and packed in 15 kilogram bags, then sent to a dairy facility in Europe, including a Spanish co-packer, where it is mixed with fats and sugars, pasteurized, homogenized, chilled, and shipped to Israel for Gad to distribute. Remilk has said Israeli filling lines could be used later if cost and capacity line up.

Why would European stores not call this product milk?

EU rules reserve the word milk for liquid from an animal udder. A fermented whey drink can still be sold there under another name if regulators allow the ingredient, but the Israeli brand “The New Milk” would not travel as a legal dairy designation.

As of August 2026, Remilk still had not named a U.S. grocery partner. Yogurt and cream cheese remained a promise sitting behind a milk bottle that Israeli stores were already scanning. The herd is still in the fields. The pareve cappuccino is already on the ticket.