Pt 25: Forming new relations, breaking old rules
‘T was in the heydays of the summer of ‘23. Bodies loosely draped over the sun-soaked wood of Those Vegan Cowboys ranch. Big ideas a–blazin’. Operation Cattle Drive was born.
“As a young boy in Switzerland, I loved cheese more than anything” Raffael, chief of Formo mesmerized, smouldering eyes lost in the wide horizon of his memories. “I never could have imagined it to become such a hot potato.”
“I think none of us did”, Sheriff Will adds, spittin’ out a sprig of hay he’d been chewin’ on. “But here we are.”
Earlier that week, the Sheriff, Jaap ‘Eyes on the horizon’ Korteweg and Niko Koffeman had decided to invite Raffa over on the ranch. Workin’ in precision fermentation might be akin to The Wild West, but all cowboys can appreciate a good partner when they meet one. Being a country boy himself, Raffa and the cowboys hit it off right away.
As fellow pioneers in the exciting prairies of precision fermentation, the small band of micro-organism-taming mavericks don’t need a lot of words to describe their challenges. The world needs cow-free cheese, and fast. Workin’ together would speed things up incredibly. To learn from each other’s failures. To streamline R&D. To produce in bigger volumes. Even to deal with red tape.
“Why invent the wheel all by ourselves? Let’s make one together, but bigger”, Raffa says as he jumps off the fence. “A cheese wheel so big the whole world can dig in.”
And that’s how it all came about. Today, Formo and Those Vegan Cowboys have a joint team of 60+ world-class seasoned scientists working as one. It’s the biggest, most powerful team in the world, able to produce in large quantities and get to price parity with animal cheese faster than any other.
The sun setting, laughter rises up over the warm field. Copper cups clinkin’ in a final toast. “This kind of collab has never been done before, so let’s take the leap. We’ve got billions of cows ‘n dogies depending on us. And I know just who we need.”, Chief Cowboy Hille concluded. “This is a job for ‘Two Faced’ Belinda. She’ll get things going. Let’s write some dairy history.”
Curious how this afternoon ended up as a press release?
Go ahead and check out the Dutch or English version. And look here if you need some pictures with that.
