Sustainable Food
Cheese Without Cows Via Precision Fermentation
An emerging technology promises vegan cheese as gooey and pungent as the real thing.
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A decade ago, Jaap Korteweg founded a company called the Vegetarian Butcher, which made faux meat close enough to the real thing to be featured on Burger King’s menu. But for anyone wanting a cheeseburger, Korteweg couldn’t find an acceptable substitute for the other half of the recipe. So last year the Dutch entrepreneur plowed the proceeds from selling the company to Unilever Plc into another venture, Those Vegan Cowboys, aiming to concoct dairy products sans cows. On the way to a plant-based diet, “cheese was the last thing that disappeared from my plate,” Korteweg says. “There are no good vegan cheeses.”