There’s No Cow, Boy!

Hille van der Kaa is what you call a jack of all trades. For years, she advised (media) companies on content and marketing concepts, she was editor-in-chief of the BN DeStem newspaper, and she taught media studies at the Fontys School of Applied Sciences and Tilburg University. But in 2020, Van der Kaa completely changed tack: she joined Those Vegan Cowboys as Chief Communications Officer, before taking over the reigns as CEO of the pioneering Dutch start-up ... operating out of Ghent.

What exactly is so ground-breaking about the company, then? Those Vegan Cowboys, established by the founders of De Vegetarische Slager, makes "real" cheese with a stainless-steel cow. Or in other words, cheese that no longer involves a cow and yet tastes exactly the same. And why exactly does that excite Van der Kaa? Because she comes from a family of farmers, but has been vegetarian almost all her life and, since the birth of her son, even vegan.

"So I understand that it's hard to change when you're already working a certain way from generation to generation, and that you don't achieve anything by casting blame on farmers. But if you show them that things can be done in a different and more future-proof way, you take away their fears. Moreover, without intensive livestock farming, large areas of farmland will be freed up, after which they can be used for something better.