“The US government has accumulated record stocks of cheese in underground “cheese caves”.”, — write: www.unian.ua
The US government has accumulated record stocks of cheese in underground “cheese caves”.
Why does the US government store record stocks of cheese underground / UNIAN collage, photo REUTERS, ua.depositphotos.comThe U.S. government has amassed a massive stockpile of about 635 million kilograms (1.4 billion pounds) of cheese, stored hundreds of feet underground in converted limestone mines known as “cheese caves.”
According to The Farmlink Project, the history of state cheese began in the 1970s during a time of dairy shortages and inflation. Financial support for the dairy industry led to overproduction, and the government found itself with mountains of cheese.
In the early 1980s, the US government owned more than 227 million kilograms of cheese, which was stored in more than 150 warehouses in 35 states.
“Cheese, cheese is everywhere, but nobody really wants to eat it,” notes anthropologist Bradley N. Jones in The Oxford Handbook of Cheese. Part of the stock was given to non-profit organizations, but a large part of the product became unfit for consumption.
Modern cheese caves provide a stable temperature for long-term storage of dairy products, but maintaining such stocks is difficult and expensive. The USDA continues to stockpile surplus cheese, in part due to falling domestic consumption of dairy products.
According to Lucas Fuss, director of dairy market analysis at HighGround Dairy, “I just read stories about cheese tea in China that went viral. Maybe we need to look into that.”
Stockpiles of cheddar, Swiss and American cheese remain in the caves while farmers look for new ways to use and sell them.
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