Chief Cowboy and founder of the company Those Vegan Cowboys Jaap Korteweg (also known from the Vegetarian Butcher) was recently a guest on Eva Jinek's talk show. I was on the edge of the sofa. Since 2020, he has been working with Those Vegan Cowboys on cow-free cheese. I find this mighty interesting.
The principle is as follows: Those Vegan Cowboys wants to mechanically mimic how a cow digests grass. For the process, they are developing a process plant, the mechanical cow, with which they try to mimic casein, the animal protein found in milk, as closely as possible. Last year they launched their first spread cheeses and now the first slices of sandwich cheese are in the supermarket.
If it's industry...
According to Korteweg, the romantic picture of cows in the meadow has long since gone. He thinks it's more bio-industry. "And if it is industry, you might as well do it in a factory. That's much more efficient," Korteweg says. And also more sustainable. Cows emit methane, a strong greenhouse gas. A machine does not. If this project succeeds, it would mean the end of the dairy farm as we know it today, but there doesn't even have to be that much change to the business model of dairy farmers, Korteweg says. "They are now mainly 'grass farmers': they cut the grass on their pastures and feed it to cows that are mostly in stalls." In his future vision, there are no longer cows in the barn but a fermenter, a bio-reactor, that does the same thing.
Nitrogen Crisis
Jinek and was raving about it. Especially when Korteweg explained that with these mechanical cows, we could well get out of the nitrogen crisis. "Now 80 per cent of the land area is used for livestock farming, while it only yields 20 per cent of calories," Korteweg said. "For dairy-free cheese and meat substitutes, only half of the agricultural land is needed, which could feed even 10 billion people." This is a tremendously bright future prospect and apparently cheaper than the current situation with real cows. After tasting the creamy cheese, Jinek was completely won over. "Indistinguishable from animal cheese" according to those present at the talk show table.
You would expect innovations that help us overcome serious contemporary crises to be met with cheers. But change also evokes resistance. This 'fake dairy' would be chemical and unhealthy, I read on LinkedIn. Even now that it is clear that we have no time to lose, people still stick their heads in the sand or opt for short-term welfare. While I was still bouncing on the sofa during the Jinek programme, reading some of the reactions made me feel a bit despondent. After all, how do we offer our (grand)children a liveable future if we have so much trouble accepting that not everything can stay the same?
