The post-WWII Bifurcation of Cheesemaking in America

In this post I will take a quick break from the weighty reconstruction of Neolithic cheesemaking and fast-forward to modern times to consider cheesemakers in America and the cultural environment and working landscape in which they live. The approach that I will take is to use cheese history as a lens through which to understand our food system in America today, specifically by focusing on how cheesemaking became bifurcated, or in other words divided, into two opposing groups that form polar extremes at either end of the overall food system. In contrast to the previous posts that relied extensively on peer-reviewed journal article scholarship to reconstruct cheese prehistory, the “history” in this post leans heavily on personal recollection and commentary. Therefore, if my personal musings are not of interest, you might want to skip this one.

At one end of today’s food system, the public mostly consumes low cost, convenient, abundantly available food products that are produced on very large scales, using high technology approaches, and which are often marketed in highly processed forms. At the other end of the spectrum the public desires, and is willing to pay for, higher priced foods that are produced on much smaller scales, often locally using more traditional technologies, with minimal processing, and that are thought to be closer to nature and more sustainable, and therefore worth paying for.

At times, these opposing ends of the food system come into conflict and introduce added complexity to the already challenging job of regulating food to ensure public safety and product integrity. This bifurcated, polarized food system can make the job of the food regulator very complex indeed. I am hoping that I can give you a glimpse into the world of our public servants in the dairy and cheese sector who are tasked with ensuring the safety and integrity of our cheeses and thereby provide some helpful context as you interact with, and thoughtfully navigate, the current food system in your daily life.

So, let’s embark now on a highly condensed historical journey to address the question: How did we get to where we are today in terms of a bifurcated food system in America? My goal is to get you to the second half of the 20th Century as quickly as possible. If you want to take a deep dive into the story of cheese in America, allow me to refer you to the books Cheese and Culture (Chapters 7-9) and American Farmstead Cheese (Chapters 1-2), where that history is discussed in detail.

Let’s start at the beginning, and the beginning in this case reaches back to England in the 16th and 17th centuries. During this period, agriculture in England underwent a fundamental transformation that was unprecedented. The feudal manorial system, i.e., the medieval manor, which had dominated the English countryside and the English economy for a thousand years, abruptly collapsed and was replaced by a market-driven, capitalistic agricultural model founded upon yeoman farming.

There were complex factors and circumstances that led to this transformation. For our purposes, suffice it to say that the yeoman farms that arose during the collapse of the medieval manor were family farms that, for the first time in England, became intensely focused on the profitable production of agricultural goods, shipped by maritime trade to distant markets, especially to London, where the population was growing explosively.

Yeoman farms, including those that specialized in cheesemaking, were enterprising, adaptable to market expectations, and focused on efficiency and cost of production because price and consistency were now essential ingredients for commercial success in the English marketplace. Furthermore, if a yeoman farm prospered, it was prone to expand in size over time by taking over neighboring, less prosperous farms. This propensity to increase the scale of cheesemaking production through consolidation was something completely new.

This very brief background on English cheesemaking is relevant to cheesemaking in America because many of the Puritans who colonized New England during the first half of the 17th century originated from the great cheesemaking regions back in England, and they brought with them the market-driven, capitalistic cheesemaking model. Consequently, the New England colonies of America, from the beginning, included a sizeable representation of yeoman dairy farmers with expertise in market-oriented hard-pressed (Cheshire-style) English cheesemaking, and they knew how to adapt to maritime trade in cheese.

It didn’t take long for the New England colonies to realize that they could produce agricultural surpluses, including cheese and butter, along with forest products and salted fish. These goods were in great demand in the southern colonies along the Atlantic coast, dominated by the tobacco and indigo plantations, and in the colonies of the West Indies where sugar plantations reigned supreme. An important side note is that in time, the plantations became dependent on, indeed addicted to, the labor of kidnapped African slaves, which ushered in a nightmarish chapter in American history. New England merchants shipped large amounts of cheese and butter, along with other agricultural, fishery and timber products to the southern coastal colonies and those of the West Indies, starting around 1650. This eventually helped to fuel the infamous triangular slave trade and supported the plantation system for over a century. Indeed, by the end of the 18th century, New England was exporting over 1.8 million lb. of Cheshire-style cheese annually to the West Indies, and almost the same amount to the southern coastal colonies of America. Virtually all of the cheesemaking in the American colonies up until the Revolutionary War, took place in New England, and most of it was market-oriented.

During the early 19th century, large numbers of farmers from new England moved west through NY State to the Great Lakes region and then continued their westward movement along the southern shores of the Great Lakes. The land that they encountered was wonderfully fertile, seemingly inexhaustible, and ripe for the taking. Of course the “taking” involved wholesale land confiscation from native peoples every step of the way.

The bottom line is that dairy farming and cheesemaking and the production of almost all nonperishable crops moved westward, away from the population centers of the Atlantic Coast. America during the 19th Century thus began to accept the idea that it can produce almost all of its food in the Midwest and transport it back to the east coast population centers. This ultimately meant that there was no longer a pressing need to maintain an extensive local agricultural base along the Atlantic Coast to feed the growing populations, other than for highly perishable foods like fluid milk that could not withstand the rigors of long-distance transportation, and selected high value specialty crops. Consequently, local food production began to disappear in the densely populated East Coast by the middle of the 19th Century.

Even as this trend accelerated in the second half of the 19th Century and expanded to other regions, another trend roared into high gear when the factory system, pioneered by the industrial revolution, entered the cheesemaking scene around mid-century. The advantages of the factory system for making cheese were immediately obvious. Especially impressive were the economies of scale that the factory offered, enabling cheese (almost entirely Cheddar style cheese at this point) to be produced far more efficiently, more uniformly, and at lower cost, than on the farm. Thus, the cheese factory was an instant success that attracted attention, and by the end of the Civil War in 1866, the number of factories in New York State alone had skyrocketed to around 500.

There was no turning back. Traditional artisanal on farm cheesemaking declined precipitously thereafter, driven nearly to extinction by the early 20th century, while factory cheese making increased relentlessly. In parallel with the rise of the cheese factory was the rise of what I refer to as “the treadmill of overproduction”, a seemingly endless cycle of increased cheese production nation-wide, leading to oversupply and cheese prices depressed below the cost of production for the smaller factories that were less efficient, thus driving them out of business while placing intense pressure on surviving factories to become ever larger. Concurrently, a continuous stream of new innovations in equipment and technology enabled cheese to be produced on ever larger scales at ever lower per-unit cost, which eventually contributed to further overproduction, leading to a new nationwide glut of cheese that depressed prices and drove smaller factories out of business.

Thus, cheese factories responded to these boom-and-bust cycles by becoming larger and ever more sophisticated as the 20th century unfolded. Indeed, the pressure to become ever larger and more efficient still haunts much of the cheese manufacturing industry in America to this day. Of course, on the positive side, much good happened as a result of industrialization as cheese became more abundant, affordable and predictable in quality. However, one can argue that there was a cultural dark side to all of this that would manifest itself during the 2nd half of the 20th century.

Now, let me pause for a moment to observe that the story of cheesemaking that I just framed out is a microcosm of what happened to almost all of food production in America. Consequently, by the second half of the 20th century, the population centers of the East Coast, and eventually much of the entire country became dependent upon food products grown, harvested and even processed on immense scales, hundreds or even thousands of miles away. As a result, Americans became increasingly disconnected with their food. For much of the population, local food production largely disappeared. For me, growing up in eastern Massachusetts during the 1960’s and 70’s, food came from the supermarket; that was the extent of my food knowledge. I knew little about farming or local food production and processing other than vague memories of dairy farms and fruit orchards from my early childhood that had since disappeared, replaced by housing developments. I realize that this is an oversimplification for how this highly centralized, large-scale, high technology end of today’s bifurcated food system came about, but it does offer a helpful lens to grasp how we got to where we are today.

The rest of the story, involving the opposite end of the food system (small-scale, local, traditional and artisanal) began in earnest after World War II. America became much more prosperous, and Americans began to travel to Europe in large numbers, where they experienced European food culture, only to return home to realize how shockingly uninteresting our own food culture had become. This, then, began to fuel a new demand for traditional, artisanal foods. At the same time, American culture, including food culture, became more diverse, multiethnic, and adventurous with new waves of immigration. And all the while, the economy was booming and suburban America had more expendable income to spend on interesting foods.

But something even bigger was “blowing it the wind” as it were...the counterculture movement of the so-called “Woodstock Generation”.  America was questioning itself and the system that it had created amidst the unprecedented affluence following world War II. One of the ways that American youth expressed this anti-establishment sentiment was through the back-to-the-land movement. The Vermont countryside was a magnet for back-to-the-landers during the 60’s and 70’s.

Ultimately, the Hippie movement faded by the end of the 70’s, but an undercurrent of discomfort with the establishment remained. Nowhere was the level of lingering discomfort and distrust greater than in matters relating to the environment, and agriculture, and the food system. This was a fundamental change in thinking in America that triggered the meteoric rise of the environmental movement, concern about climate change, and the sustainable agriculture movement. This sea change in attitudes was birthed in the 60’s and 70’s but its conception stretched back even further, and it has been growing stronger ever since, to the point where these attitudes are very much mainstream today.

It was within this changing cultural context that my PhD mentor at Cornell University, Frank Kosikowski, single handedly created the American Cheese Society in 1983. Kosi envisioned a grass-roots organization dedicated to traditional artisanal cheeses and cheesemaking in America, the very antithesis of industrial cheesemaking. His timing was impeccable, and his new society quickly became the focal point for a new generation of artisanal cheesemakers and cheese lovers that had been born of the counterculture movement and now had come of age. As an aside, Kosi “assigned” me to take on the role of first Vice President of the American Cheese Society in 1983/84, an experience that thrust me into writing my first anthropology-oriented publication and which profoundly impacted my future in ways that I could never have imagined at the time.

Three years later, my professional life was directly impacted when I joined the faculty at the University of Vermont as an Assistant Professor in January of 1986. Just 2 months after I arrived on campus, I found myself overseeing a joint-venture project involving a fledgling Vermont farmstead cheese company and an award-winning multi-generational artisanal Brie and Camembert cheesemaker from Normandy, France.  The project objective was to reproduce genuine Brie and Camembert cheeses in Vermont using pasteurized milk. In France, traditional Brie and Camembert are produced from raw milk, and they are typically consumed by around 30 days after manufacture. However, raw milk was obviously a problem in Vermont because the Vermont and Federal safety regulations required a minimum of 60 days of aging for raw milk cheeses. Therefore, our goal was to produce cheeses from pasteurized milk that would come as close as possible to the authentic raw milk cheeses of Normandy. Over the course of a week of experiments, we made about 800 lb of very traditional Brie and Camembert, and this was a stunning education for me; I had never witnessed traditional cheesemaking like this.

What really took me by surprise, however, was the public reaction to the project. Local newspapers from across VT sent reporters to cover the story. The 3 local television affiliates sent crews repeatedly to film stories for the evening news. The Boston Globe sent a reporter to cover the story, and even the New York Times got into the act with major coverage. The story then attracted the attention of Vermont Public Radio, and I was asked to write a piece for their bi-monthly publication, North by Northeast. I, a newly minted cheese scientist, found myself again writing about anthropology, about how the traditional French cheesemakers viewed their craft so differently from the way we approached cheesemaking in America. And I wrote about the regulatory complexity of reconciling these two very different worlds of cheesemaking.

Suffice it to say that the project was a huge wake-up call for me, and it soon became clear that a revival of traditional farmstead cheesemaking was well underway in Vermont. Remember, this was 40 years ago, this was completely new to the United States, and Vermont was one of the few regions in the country where this was happening intensely. This revival of traditional artisanal cheesemaking became a microcosm for the American food system more broadly, as soon other traditional food products (artisanal breads, grass fed meat products, craft beers, local produce and farmer markets, and so forth) came on the scene in a big way, creating the bifurcated food system that we have today.

One of the striking observations that the Vermont case study underscores is the important role that dairy and cheese regulators played in placing Vermont at the forefront of these revolutionary changes in the food system. Over the past 40 years, the Vermont Department of Agriculture, and later the Agency of Agriculture, and its regulatory arm the Dairy Section, have welcomed, supported and worked hand-in-hand with our artisanal cheesemakers to find win-win solutions to very challenging regulatory hurdles over the years.

Allow me to offer a couple of examples of the huge difference that dairy inspectors and regulators have made. During my first years at UVM, I was busy building a research program around the needs of industrial-scale Mozzarella cheesemakers in the State.  At the time, Mozzarella production was by far the largest of any cheese type made in Vermont, and indeed throughout much of the U.S., therefore the large pizza cheese makers were my priority as a Land Grant University researcher and, frankly, I wasn’t doing very much to support the new farmstead cheesemakers.

The Vermont dairy inspectors, on the other hand, had to deal with a growing number of very traditional farmstead cheesemakers who presented significant regulatory challenges because virtually none of them had any formal training in cheese technology. These were very smart, very motived cheesemakers, but they lacked the basic training that every cheesemaker needed to master at the end of the 20th century, to produce cheese safely and responsibly for commercial sale. Consequently, the VT State dairy inspectors let their boss, the head of the Dairy Section, know that they were concerned about this new group of cheesemakers who needed training.

The head of the Dairy section, in turn, informed Ron Allbee, who was the Vermont Commissioner of Agriculture at the time. Ron saw the potential of this new group of cheesemakers, and he wanted to support them with training to help them be the best that they could be. Therefore, the Vermont Department of Agriculture asked me to put together a multi-day cheesemaking short course during the summer of 1988, aimed specifically at these new farmstead cheesemakers. And most significantly for my standpoint at the time, the Ag Department offered to provide some funding for the course. Now that got my attention, because quite honestly, I was busy elsewhere writing grants to fund my Mozzarella research program. Money talks.

The course was held in the summer of 1986, and the following is a brief passage from an article that our flagship Vermont newspaper, the Burlington Free Press, wrote about short course:

“The course, held in a laboratory at UVM’s Carrigan Hall, was sponsored in part by the Vermont Department of Agriculture. The department’s Michelle Beebe promoted the course as a meeting place for small cheesemakers who feel isolated in their plants. “We have no statewide organization where they can hear their language spoken,” she said.”

What I want to emphasize is that Commissioner Ron Allbee’s vision, and the Department of Agriculture’s willingness to invest in and encourage Farmstead cheesemakers created a welcoming and supportive environment for artisanal cheesemaking in Vermont. This happened long before most other states followed suit, and it all started with the dairy inspectors who saw an emerging challenge and proactively initiated an effort to find a win-win solution. Amazingly, they didn’t discourage this new breed of cheesemakers, even though dealing with farmstead cheesemakers was extremely labor intensive.

Over the next 40 years, official delegations from distant states in the U.S. and internationally from places as far away as Japan came to visit Vermont to learn how artisanal cheesemaking in this brave little state led the way in what would become a world-wide re-emergence of traditional cheesemaking. My response always, when asked why Vermont, centered around the visionary regulatory environment of the State at a time when most of the U.S. had not yet come to the same place of appreciation for this new (actually very ancient) approach to cheesemaking.

The short course by the way filled up quickly and had a sizable waiting list, and incredibly enough, it attracted cheesemakers from as far away Wisconsin. I was shocked! Something was happening here, and Ron Allbee and the Ag Department were ahead of the curve in grasping that this was important to Vermont agriculture and beyond.

Let’s jump ahead 10 years now to 1998. The Vermont Cheese Council, a trade organization dedicated specifically to support artisanal cheesemakers in the State, was newly formed under the visionary leadership of a small group of cheese industry leaders in State that included two extraordinary figures that deserve special recognition: Allison Hooper, co-founder of Vermont Creamery, and Jed Davis, Vice President of Sustainability for Cabot cheese. The fact that the upstart goat milk cheesemaker, Allison Hooper, and the executive Jed Davis of the large “industrial” cheesemaker Cabot, were working closely together on behalf of small artisanal farmstead cheesemakers was stunning! This was a completely new paradigm for United States, and I had the privilege of watching this unfold as a university cheese scientist with deep Land Grant interest in both ends of the cheese industry and food system more broadly.

One of the Council’s first initiatives, along with preparing a Code of Best Practices for artisanal cheesemakers, was to co-sponsor a multi-day advanced cheesemaking workshop at the University of Vermont specifically oriented towards farmstead cheesemakers, which I was called upon to make happen.  What was remarkable about this event from my perspective, was the fact that the Vermont Department of Agriculture sent two of its chief dairy inspectors to learn and connect with, the artisanal cheesemakers of the State. This kind of collegiality, and frankly humility, that existed between the regulatory inspectors and the cheesemakers, was extraordinary in my experience. I came to understand and appreciate that this is the Vermont way. We work together to find win-win solutions to difficult challenges. I cannot overstate the importance of this positive, supportive regulatory environment, and the spirit of collegiality that existed between State regulators and cheesemakers during the early years of the Vermont Cheese Council, and which continues to this day.

Let me give you one more example of how the Vermont regulatory environment led the way to a different way to approach food safety issues. This time the key player was Roger Allbee, twin brother to Ron Allbee, who I mentioned a moment ago. As an aside, Roger and Ron Allbee grew up on a 11th generation Vermont dairy farm. Quite the pedigree. By this time the Department of Agriculture had been elevated to Agency of Agriculture, and Roger Allbee served as the Vermont Secretary of Agriculture.

Roger became very interested in the French concept of terroir, or a taste of place as my UVM colleague Amy Trubek has described the term, as a means to further differentiate the exceptional quality of Vermont food products, including cheeses.
Therefore, in 2009, Secretary Allbee led a delegation to France to explore the potential for a Vermont concept of terroir. However, this concept had implications for the dairy regulators in the State because; for cheeses to benefit most from the concept of terroir they need to be made from unpasteurized milk, so that they can fully reflect the indigenous microbiota of the surrounding landscape.

This then made it essential to create a welcoming regulatory environment for raw milk cheesemaking. Of course, raw milk cheesemaking in general has been controversial in America, and the outbreak of HPAI bird flu virus that we are experiencing today is just the latest challenge that raises legitimate questions about the safety of using raw milk for cheesemaking. Nevertheless, Vermont’s experience has been that raw milk cheesemaking can be carried out safely by implementing effective risk reduction strategies coupled with regulatory oversight.

The bottom line is that Roger Allbee’s vision for celebrating terroir the Vermont way had to be accompanied by a regulatory environment that supported that vision, and it fell to the Dairy Regulators and inspectors to work with cheesemakers to implement effective risk reduction programs and regulatory oversight to make that vision a reality.

Now, it’s important here to remember that the context for all this effort to support raw milk cheesemaking is that there is a sizable segment of the American public that desires raw milk cheeses, and they are willing to pay for those cheeses. For some States like Vermont, this is both a culturally and economically important component of the agricultural working landscape. The thoughtful, supportive and constructive approach of the Vermont Department/Agency of Agriculture, their regulatory arm and the Dairy Inspectors on the front lines, and indeed the whole State apparatus, played an irreplaceable role in the remarkable growth of artisanal and farmstead cheesemaking in Vermont, which led the way in America and indeed in many ways, the world.

The message that I want to convey here is that dairy regulators are public servants who are essential to our food system. What they do matters, and frankly they are not always appreciated. I would argue that the Vermont story represents a fundamental paradigm shift in which our regulators are the unsung heroes of this very recent chapter in the story of cheesemaking, worthy of our trust and admiration.