The cheese selection

I popped into a rather large retailer here in the UK on Sunday, and in addition to the usual aisles for cheese and dairy, it also had this: “This is not just cheese,” a play on Marks & Spencer’s long standing slogan, “This is not just food.” It was a double-sided aisle of cheeses and accompaniments (see photo). I would have stayed longer but I was with a friend, so I grabbed a net pack of Cornish favourites for the lunches and general snacking (plus some little mozzarella balls for a tomato salad I am making) and we were off. I think next time I will linger, but truthfully, it’s bad enough for me when I pop through any store. A regular cheese aisle has me pondering what I can make with that cheese, and that cheese. A little of the good stuff goes a long way, I have found. This giant smorgasbord will practically be a day trip for me.

Meanwhile, I wonder how this particular paragraph from the US Dairy Export Council report on US dairy, cheese and butter exports will age as the year 2026 progresses: “US butter sales posted their ninth straight month of triple-digit YOY increases. Volume rose 187% to 9,194 metric tonnes (MT). The Middle East/North Africa was responsible for nearly half that gain, with January volume to the region rising by 2,511 MT, an exponential increase over the previous year.”

I doubt it will be the same for the next nine months, starting about three weeks ago. I just hope that everyone can hang on and somehow make it through this most recent series of events, frankly. But as we’ve seen, politics often impinges on dairy, as dairy is in so very many people’s lives, no matter where they live. Sometimes that is a dubious honour as it takes the flak for tariffs and other restrictions (and places get bombed – I still shudder at the photos taken in Ukraine of the impact on their dairy sector), when all it is really about is sitting down with a nice piece of cheese for a minute. Stay safe, everyone.

• Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International. Keep in touch via email: [email protected] Twitter: @dairyindustries Linkedin: @dairyindustriesinternational