Apparently, We’re Having a Cheese Crisis

 

How Did We Get Here?

I never thought I would live to see the day when a block of Tillamook cheddar became a culture-war battlefield, but here we are. Apparently, some people have discovered that certain Tillamook cheeses carry a halal certification, and the internet has collectively lost whatever remaining grip it had on reality. Before anybody starts throwing cheese at their television, let's talk about what halal actually means.

Halal is simply the Islamic term for something that is permissible under Islamic dietary rules. Kosher is the Jewish dietary system governing what foods are considered fit or acceptable under Jewish law. They are different systems with different rules, but there is considerable overlap. Pork is prohibited under both. Blood is prohibited under both. There are rules governing meat and how animals are slaughtered, along with requirements concerning certain ingredients. There is nothing particularly sinister about any of this.

Wait...This Isn't New!

In fact, Tillamook says its fermentation-produced rennet has been halal and kosher certified since 2016. That's right. 2016. As in a full decade. This isn't some brand-new corporate conspiracy in which Tillamook executives woke up last Tuesday and decided America needed Muslim cheese.

The rennet is used to make the cheese. The certification tells Muslim consumers that the ingredients and manufacturing process meet halal requirements. The same basic concept applies to kosher certification, which has been sitting on food packages for decades without anybody deciding that their cheddar had joined a religious movement.

The particularly funny part is that halal-certified Tillamook cheese is not somehow magically different cheese. It's still milk. It's still cheese. It's still going to get stuck to the roof of your mouth if you eat it without a cracker.

The halal certification doesn't mean the cheese has been blessed by an imam. It doesn't mean Muslims are taking over the dairy industry. It doesn't mean Christians are being forced to eat it. It doesn't mean the cheese has been converted to Islam. It means a certification organization has determined that the ingredients and production process meet halal standards.

That's it. You can buy it, eat it, decide you don't like it or buy another brand. This is America. We have approximately 37 varieties of cheddar sitting next to each other in the grocery store because apparently cheese requires more consumer choice than healthcare, yet nobody is being forced to purchase the halal-certified one.

You Could Just Read the Label

What makes this whole controversy even more ridiculous is that Tillamook has products that aren't halal certified. The company says the majority of its cheeses are halal certified, while products including ice cream, yogurt, sour cream, butter, cream cheese spreads and frozen meals aren't. Anyone who genuinely doesn't want to purchase a halal-certified product has a remarkably simple solution: read the label. Humanity has survived this particular challenge before.

The current outrage also seems to be built partly on the idea that Tillamook has suddenly started doing this. It hasn't. The company has been using fermentation-produced rennet with halal and kosher certification for years. What changed wasn't necessarily the cheese. What changed was that people noticed the label.

Then social media did what social media does best. A relatively boring piece of information about food certification got shoved into the machinery of the culture war and came out the other end as a five-alarm emergency. Some people are now calling for boycotts. Others are claiming that halal certification represents the "Islamization" of America. One particularly ridiculous description circulating online has referred to it as "Al Qaeda cheese." Yes, cheddar has apparently joined the jihad.

What Halal Actually Means

At some point we need to take a step back and remember that religious dietary certifications exist because people have different religious beliefs. Jewish consumers want to know whether food meets kosher requirements. Muslim consumers want to know whether food meets halal requirements. Vegetarians want to know whether something contains animal-derived ingredients. People with allergies want to know whether a product contains ingredients that could make them sick. People with diabetes read labels because, unlike certain people on Facebook, their pancreas doesn't care about somebody else's political ideology.

Food labels exist to give consumers information. That is generally considered a good thing.

Nobody is demanding that everyone become Muslim because Tillamook put a halal certification on a package of cheese. Nobody is demanding that Christians stop eating cheddar. Nobody is changing the First Amendment because somebody found a certification symbol next to the nutrition information.

It's cheese.

Nobody Is Making You Buy It

The whole controversy becomes particularly revealing when you take a step back. If someone doesn't want to buy a halal-certified product, that's their choice. Nobody needs to agree with their reason. They can put it back on the shelf and buy something else. What seems ridiculous is turning a voluntary food certification that has existed for years into evidence that America is somehow being conquered one package of shredded cheddar at a time.

You don't have to eat halal food. You don't have to agree with Islam. You don't have to like Tillamook. You don't even have to buy cheese from Oregon.

America has roughly 5.5 million Muslims and millions of Jewish Americans, along with Catholics, Protestants, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, people of other faiths and people who couldn't care less about religion. They're all buying groceries. That's what happens in a country with religious freedom.

The government isn't telling you what religion to practice. Your grocery store isn't telling you what religion to practice. Tillamook isn't telling you what religion to practice. The label is simply saying, "This product meets these particular dietary requirements."

The Bottom Line

If that is enough to send someone into a full-blown cultural panic, I'm not sure the problem is the cheese. I think we may have finally reached the point where people need to put down the smartphone, walk away from Facebook and eat a sandwich. Preferably one with whatever cheese they personally prefer.

Apparently, we now have to explain to grown adults that cheddar is not a threat to Western civilization.