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Comment by jeromenerf | Hacker News Reader

Is it even worth it to make cheese anywhere else than France, Switzerland and Italy mountains?

You can make good cheese in the United States, cheese is really about the recipe (and how much cream was left in the milk).

There just is nothing like the culture of cheese production, US foodstuffs are awful quality because the general public buys it up for some unknown reason.

Wait. You just wrote that if America implemented a supply control system that milk prices would increase to $4/g with the implication being that increase in price would be unacceptable. Now you wrote that "US foodstuffs are awful quality because the general public buys it for some unknown reason." You can't have your cake and eat it too. Most likely the public has gotten used to low prices for low quality products. I have had amazing cheese in Vermont and it was expensive - probably because the producer had to use more milk fat which is more costly.

Supply control increases prices without increasing quality. High quality dairy gets even more expensive.

Agreed. I didn't suggest that supply control increases quality, and yes it does increase price. However in Canada it appears that the increase in price has returned a benefit to the consumer by the gov't restricting the use of certain drugs.

Raw milk cheese is typically easier to produce and far tastier. However, as far as I'm told, it is illegal in the USA. So there is a simple reason: Your fear. ;)

I have relatives who run an organic farm, which is rather large and industrialized for a farm that has the official German "bio" label. They make their own cheese as a side business, but it is only sold locally. This way they can charge a higher price and there are no middlemen, so it is profitable. But I doubt this would scale.

We were on holiday in France skiing for a week once and the hotel dinner included 4 different local cheeses each night - none were repeated of the course of a week.

It wasn't exactly a smart hotel (2* I think) but the food was sublime.

Some of the cheese they sell in France would be classified as a biological weapon in Germany. They are awesome.

Equally, Limburger would be classed as a biological weapon in France, and I dare say, the world. Brevibacterium Linens for the ... eeeugh.

(but, good cheese)

Nope. There are many French cheeses like that. Munster, livarot, époisses ...

There are indeed. I didn't understand where the "nope" went to?

For years, we had a few goats, and made our own dairy and cheese. It worked fine, at the price of having to do some extra chores each day. So I'm not sure what you are measuring to define if it is "worth it".

I was just being sarcastic I guess.

Anyway, I don’t believe in high volume, low value dairy products as sustainable. They aren’t even good products.

I am perfectly fine with homemade cheese from the backyard goats.

Portugal, Spain, Greece and the rest of the Balkans, Romania, UK, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands also make, eat and export plenty of cheese.

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