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> everytime I read an article about vegan cheese it seems to lead with the outdated information that rennet is, like, normally, made with the stomach lininig of

> everytime I read an article about vegan cheese it seems to lead with the outdated information that rennet is, like, normally, made with the stomach lininig of unweaned calves From the article: > What Perfect Day is doing isn’t new, exactly: Pandya, who is vegan, points out that for a long time, dairy cheese wasn’t even considered vegetarian because of its use of rennet. When vegetarian rennet was developed in the 1970s and commercialized in the 1980s, “it wasn’t done for any profitability reason or consumer trend reason or anything to do with animal welfare,” Pandya says. “It was just economics — like, it just made more sense to use the latest in fermentation and biotechnology to figure out a way to make that enzyme without the extraction from an animal.

cheese_goddess 6y ago
I've read that. Why do you copy it here?
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  Because the very counterpoint you were making was already addressed in detail in the article. Admittedly not as much detail, but they weren't being as simplistic and false as you suggest with your quote of the article.
  - cheese_goddess 6y ago
    Thanks for the explanation but the text you quote doesn't say that fermentation-produced rennet is the norm in the cheese industry and that animal rennets (as well as fungal and plant rennets) are only used in a tiny proportion of all commercial cheeses. If someone who didn't know anything about cheesemaking were to read the article, the opinion they would form from it would probably be that rennet is made from calf stomachs' linings and that other kinds of rennet are "some times used". It wouldn't help anyone reading the article to find out that "vegetarian rennet" was commercialised in the 1970's and 80's as the article later says, because the article hasn't made any attempt to explain what "vegetarian rennet" is, exactly. "Vegetarian rennet" can apply to fungal or plant rennet as well as it can apply to rennet produced by bacterial frermentation and an inexperienced reader may well confuse the three and think that it only applies to the former two. To quote directly from the article, the phrase "vegetarian rennet, derived from molds or plants, is used in some cases" is the one I find the most potentially confusing to readers who don't have detailed knowledge of cheesemaking.

cheese_goddess 6y ago

I've read that. Why do you copy it here?

h0l0cube 6y ago
Because the very counterpoint you were making was already addressed in detail in the article. Admittedly not as much detail, but they weren't being as simplistic and false as you suggest with your quote of the article.
- cheese_goddess 6y ago
  Thanks for the explanation but the text you quote doesn't say that fermentation-produced rennet is the norm in the cheese industry and that animal rennets (as well as fungal and plant rennets) are only used in a tiny proportion of all commercial cheeses. If someone who didn't know anything about cheesemaking were to read the article, the opinion they would form from it would probably be that rennet is made from calf stomachs' linings and that other kinds of rennet are "some times used". It wouldn't help anyone reading the article to find out that "vegetarian rennet" was commercialised in the 1970's and 80's as the article later says, because the article hasn't made any attempt to explain what "vegetarian rennet" is, exactly. "Vegetarian rennet" can apply to fungal or plant rennet as well as it can apply to rennet produced by bacterial frermentation and an inexperienced reader may well confuse the three and think that it only applies to the former two. To quote directly from the article, the phrase "vegetarian rennet, derived from molds or plants, is used in some cases" is the one I find the most potentially confusing to readers who don't have detailed knowledge of cheesemaking.