Reading between the lines here: the American cheese “product” isn’t very good, and consumer tastes have shifted. Also, I assume the dairy industry is heavily subsidized by the US govnerment?
> Suppliers turn that extra milk into cheese because it is less perishable and stays fresh for longer periods. But Americans are turning their noses up at those processed cheese slices and string cheese — varieties that are a main driver of the U.S. cheese market — in favor of more refined options, Novakovic tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson.
it’s closer to how beer has changed. american mass produced and majority revenue generating cheese is low quality and people have better access to higher quality cheese. so they aren’t buying the traditional money making cheeses as much anymore. of the cheese people are buying now, most of it is american, some of it imported. similar to rise of craft brew. much of the dairy supply chain has been subsidized, previously to ensure availability and lower prices. the same outcome is happening, big cheese makers in the u. s. are branching product lines to have more specialty cheeses or will buy out those small cheese makers. tastes definitely have shifted
Maybe but the article states "Record dairy production in the U.S. has produced a record surplus of cheese causing prices to drop"
So, perhaps there is some of what you say, but it looks like the article is saying it's predominantly due to overproduction. So tastes are changing, and people are shifting their habits but milk (and thus cheese) production have continued to climb.
American cheese is cheap. And when you have an oversupply of milk, you have to either dump it or turn it into something that can be stored for later sale. Thus cheap cheese.
Sorta. Cheese can still go bad (or at least develop a form most people aren't interested in eating).
Part of the problem here is that storing milk as cheese is fine if you assume that in the future there will be less milk/cheese and you'll be able to unload your current stock. This will eventually happen, but along the way you're just going to see a ton of dairy farmers go under and who knows how long it's going to take for the market to stabilize"
Now that sure is an interesting development! However, in cheesemaking, some of the ingredients and byproducts are discarded as part of the process, so you could not recover that for the original milk
