The price of cheese & cheese crime
The Financial Times (18th April 2022) reported a cheese crisis. The FT sees things in economic terms so they were looking at a very sharp increase in the US market price for cheddar cheese. It had gone up by around a third since the start of 2021 at that point.
In Europe the price of Mozzarella had gone up 44% since November 2021, while UK cheddar prices had risen by 55% in the last two years. There is a ‘tight’ milk supply for cheese and energy prices are considerably up.
The FT reported that this has led to an increase in cheese thefts. Recently 1600 kilos of cheese were stolen from a Dutch dairy farm. Parmesan thefts, a perpetual issue in Italy are increasing.
While cheese(with bread-see William Cobbett’s Rural Rides) was a staple of the working class diet in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, good quality cheese has never been a cheap item. Cheese mongers were amongst the Yeomanry that rode at Peterloo in 1819. Boris Johnson(as Churchill who liked French cheese) is a cheese lover but no doubt gets someone else to pay for his supplies. As for Liz Truss and cheese.
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