Dose of Gross is Back
Just when you thought it was safe to rustle up some grub, the friendly scientists from The Island of Dr. Moreau have been concocting their latest creation. They have been busy blending, brewing, and bio-hacking their latest monstrosity — and word is, it’s crawling to a table near you.
Have you ever looked at your dinner and wondered, “what the heck am I actually eating?”
This week’s Dose of Gross plunges into the culinary quagmire, where food science collides with corporate biotech in ways that range from innovative to straight-up stomach-turning.
KFC’s SECRET Herbs and Spices
A few years ago, KFC announced it was exploring bioprinted chicken nuggets, partnering with a Russian lab aiming to grow chicken cells inside a 3D-printed scaffold.
(Finger lickin goooood!)
The pitch was efficiency and sustainability; the vibe was more Franken-fillet than farm-fresh bucket. Imagine chicken grown the way you’d mass produce a replacement part for your Honda lawnmower — only, you know, edible.
It allegedly hasn’t hit the menu yet, but the fact that the Colonel is dabbling in bioprinters has me running for the hills.
A Sip of Cell Science: Pepsi & HEK-293
And on the subject of unsettling food futures, Pepsi once worked with a biotech company that used a human-cell line called HEK-293 to test flavour compounds.
These cells—originally derived from aborted foetal tissue in the 70’s helped researchers identify which sweeteners taste the best to human receptors.
What’s Pepsi’s slogan again… Oh yeah, “Thirsty For More”.
Pepsi insists it wasn’t used in drinks, but it sure makes you wonder what else they might be up to.
Churning Cash: Pfizer’s Rotten Rennet Empire
Now we get to the star of this week’s grossness: cheese. Specifically, the not-so-cozy fact that 90% of modern cheese owes its existence to Franken-Pfizer.
Wait… Does Pfizer make cheese ingredients? Pfizer (yes, that Pfizer) is one of the major producers of FPC — Fermentation-Produced Chymosin. It’s a genetically engineered version of the rennet enzyme traditionally harvested from the stomach lining of young calves.
Instead of scraping enzymes out of animals, scientists insert the chymosin gene into microbes like yeast or fungi. These organisms crank out the enzyme in steel vats, pharma-style, which is then purified and sold to cheesemakers around the world.
Be on the lookout for Non-Animal Rennet, Vegetarian Rennet, and other nefarious names hiding the true identity of their man-made monstrosity.
Today, 90%+ of cheese in the U.S. is made using this lab-engineered rennet. You’ve probably eaten it thousands of times without realizing your cheddar, gouda, mozzarella, and parmesan were all coagulated by a biotech product brewed by one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.
Always safe and effective though…
Is it unsafe? Trust the science guys, FPC is considered safe and nearly chemically identical to animal rennet. But you are going to have to take their word for that.
Franken-cheese is curdled using an enzyme mass-produced in fermenters by a pharmaceutical giant, a giant more commonly associated with vaccines, statins, and billion-dollar lawsuits is enough to give “cheese culture” a whole new meaning.
The Pfizer connection people don’t expect
The oddity isn’t just that Pfizer makes rennet. It’s the contrast: the warm, pastoral image of cheesemaking versus the clinical, stainless-steel, microbe-fermenting reality behind most cheese today.
People imagine cows, pastures, green meadows… not Pfizer-owned biotech facilities producing proteins originally from calf guts, now expressed by genetically tweaked fungi.
If you like your food artisanal, this is a bit like finding out your grandma’s “secret recipe” involves recombinant DNA and industrial fermentation tanks.
And yes — Pfizer is the company behind the largest criminal settlement in U.S. history.
If the name “Pfizer” rings a louder bell than just cheese enzymes, that’s because in 2009 the company agreed to pay a record-setting $2.3 billion to settle criminal and civil allegations involving illegal promotion of certain drugs. It remains the largest health-care fraud settlement ever paid by a pharmaceutical company.
They are also the same mob that provided covid jabs with total immunity from legal liability, thanks to the governments around the world. It must be nice to run a line of products where no matter what you do you will never be sued.
Does all this mean their rennet is unsafe? I’ll let you decide.
If you want an old fashioned cheese, free from “pfizerization”, look for animal rennet on the list of ingredients. There seems to be a very limited supply.
Woolworths stocks the brand “MILLEL” which was the only brand I could find.
Happy Hunting.
Written by Frank Ian Stine Jr.
Chitchat Newspaper. December 2025.