Cheese cultures derive their vegan and vegetarian status from cultures, milk.
| Vegan? Maybe | Vegetarian? Yes |
Classifications are made based on the available commercial supply of the ingredient, and are made based on the criteria on our classifications page.
Commercially available cheese cultures may be vegan depending on the source, but are always vegetarian.
Cheese cultures refer to the bacteria used to acidify milk sugars into lactic acid. Although these bacteria should be vegan, we mark it as maybe vegan because the bacteria are probably grown using milk and as far as we can tell this wording is not used for vegan cheeses.