International pleas solidify to eat more cheese
A patriotic rallying cry has been made in Britain, France and Canada:
For the sake of the greater good, don’t just wear a mask and stay at home. Please, eat more cheese.
In Britain, Prince Charles urged his country to buy more of this homemade dairy product, writing in a letter May 10 that it was “deeply troubling to learn that this crisis risks destroying one of the most wonderful joys in life – British cheese!”
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged citizens to “pick up some Canadian cheese to help a local dairy farmer.” His government recently increased the borrowing capacity of the Canadian Dairy Commission by 200 million Canadian dollars to purchase and store more cheese and butter.
The European Commission also called out “the disturbance in the cheese market” and agreed to pay farmers for the storage of cheese, including 18,000 metric tons for France, where industry leaders pleaded for more cheese consumption. “We refuse to resign ourselves to throwing away the extra quantities,” said a letter from a French cheese industry group.
The problem stems from the disruption between supply and demand, much like with other food industries affected by restaurant and school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dairy farmers had to dump milk that couldn’t be redirected to other markets in time before it spoiled. Same with cheese businesses that suddenly had too much cheese supply with a limited shelf life.
In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture also has stepped up purchases of dairy products to more than $330 million during April through May, up from $88 million during the same months last year, according to the USDA.
“That has helped to bring more balance to market prices for milk and cheese,” said Matt Herrick, spokesman for the International Dairy Foods Association. “Because of growing food insecurity, those products are going directly to food banks, non-profits, and food-insecure people rather than going to storage.”
Besides a surplus supply, smaller cheese businesses have struggled because consumers aren’t buying as much high-end cheese during a time of high unemployment. A survey by the American Cheese Society in May found that more than 71% of respondents applied
for debt relief or financial assistance, while 30% said they laid off or furloughed employees.
But it’s not because Americans or other Western consumers want cheese any less. On the contrary, cheese is practically addictive to humans and involves the same brain receptors as opiates, said Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and author of the book “The Cheese Trap.” He’s described cheese as “dairy crack.”
“Cheese craving is caused by compounds called casomorphins, that are released as dairy proteins are digested,” Barnard wrote in an email to USA TODAY. “They attach to the same brain receptors that heroin or other opiates attach to. In addition, cheese is high in salt (even higher than potato chips) and fat (70% of calories), both of which contribute to its habit-forming potential.”
That’s not the healthiest mix to ingest, as Barnard explains in his book. But this root source of consumer demand helps explain why cheese is such big business – and therefore so important for some governments that they’ve stepped in to help.
While American cheese businesses face similar risks, American consumers at least can take comfort in one thing – more cheese. Retail cheese sales increased 43.7% since last year for the 12week period ending May 23, according to the Nielsen research firm. That means Americans are buying more for home consumption, though it’s not enough to make up for the shutdown in the food-service industry.
For the bigger cheese companies, “there’s no room to store it because they’re filled to the gills right now,” said Marianne Smukowski, president of the American Cheese Society. For smaller companies, she said “they’re sitting on a lot of product right now because consumers do not want to spend a lot of money to buy to high-end cheese.”
“It’s been a struggle for the folks out there in the cheese industry,” she said.