How cheese has become so valuable that it's being stolen to order
When dairy farmer Patrick Holden sat down at his kitchen table to read his emails one day in July, he couldn’t believe his luck. A buyer, who claimed to represent a French supermarket chain, wanted to buy 22 tonnes of Hafod, his specialist cheddar.
The farm didn’t have enough to fulfil the order, so 20 tonnes of Somerset cheddar was also provided by two other dairy farms to make it up; in all, this was £300,000-worth of some of the most expensive cheese made in the UK. But a number of these food crimes have also targeted the cheese industry – and in particular luxury cheese.
In 2024, overall food price inflation in the UK has fallen to 1.7 per cent, but less so for cheese. “The retail price of cheddar increased by 6.5 per cent up to May 2024,” adds McGuigan. “This is why we’re seeing security tags on blocks of cheddar in supermarkets. Based on price alone, cheese is one of the most desirable foods a criminal can steal.”
According to Quinn, once drug cartels and other criminal operators gain a foothold into how a food business operates, they spot other opportunities. “They will infiltrate a legitimate business, take control of its distribution networks and use it to move other illegal items, including stolen food.” State television made a great show of the ban by broadcasting footage of foreign food being bulldozed, buried or burned, including huge cheeses being dumped and crushed.The Russian government began confiscating banned food at the border and publicly destroying it
Since 2014, expensive and complex varieties of cheese from countries that were not previously known for their cheese have appeared on shop shelves, such as Belarusian camembert and parmesan. Some companies import European cheese to Belarus or other CIS countries, where the label is swapped so that it can be sold legally in Russian shops.Corruption makes the movement of sanction-busting food possible, says Prof Elliott.
And in the US, strict federal rules mean it’s illegal to produce or import unpasteurised cheeses aged for less than 60 days, leading to a black market for raw-milk products such as French classics Brie de Meaux and Mont d’Or. In 2015, a raw-milk trafficking gang was prosecuted for distributing unpasteurised cheeses.
Buyers can now scan each wheel to check its authenticity or find out if it was stolen. The consortium is yet to release any figures showing whether the technology is cutting down levels of fraud.Authentic Parmigiano Reggiano is highly prized – but the value of fake parmesan sold is estimated to be about £2bn a year
For the cheesemakers, this isn’t just about a stolen food; the missing Hafod, Westcombe and Pitchfork represent ways of farming and food production that took thousands of years to evolve, shaped landscapes and became part of British culture, yet which have been all but lost in just a few generations.
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