Why Is Switzerland - of All Places - Importing So Much Cheese?
The Swiss are proud of their cheese, and most of the cheese they eat are local varieties like Gruyère, Emmental and other hard cheeses from milk from happy cows that are famous all over the world. The Swiss also eat a lot of cheese: more than 50 pounds per person per year, versus about 40 pounds per person in the United States.
“Cheese is part of our identity,” said Daniel Koller, a director at Swissmilk, Switzerland’s dairy association. That’s why one of Mr. Koller’s colleagues, the president of the association, created a storm this month when he told a Swiss newspaper that Switzerland was on track to import more cheese than it exports this year, which he called “absurd economically, socially and ecologically.”
In fact, the Swiss cheese trade balance has been shrinking for decades, and especially since the market was liberalized in 2007, which allowed the country to trade with the European Union without tariffs or quotas in either direction. Switzerland now exports about 40 percent of the cheese it produces, per industry estimates.
But in each of the first five months of this year, Switzerland imported more cheese by weight than it sold abroad, according to customs data. In part, that’s because the Swiss have developed a taste for foreign cheeses, with local varieties accounting for 64 percent of consumption last year, down from 77 percent in 2007, according to Swissmilk.
Source: The New York Times
