For some reason, a story about the theft of 3,500 pounds of Gouda from a family-run dairy and craft cheese-making operation near the town of Fijnaart in the Netherlands received major international media attention last week.
The cheese heist involved no injuries, arrests or significant property damage, and caused so little commotion that the dairy owners and their watchdog all slept through it. The loss of the Gouda, valued at about $23,000, was of little consequence to anyone but its legal owners. The theft of a single cheese slicer from the Amsterdam Cheese Museum back in 2015 involved a bigger haul for its thieves, since the platinum-sheathed blade was studded with 220 small diamonds and valued at $28,000.
Even so, the theft of 161 22-pound wheels of Gouda from the Dutch dairy farm drew coverage from Time, Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with dozens of other news outlets from around the globe.
I suppose the story offered a bit of semi-comic relief during a week in which the Russian invasion of Ukraine dominated the news. But, while five-figure cheese heists may not happen every day, they are not unheard of, with many taking place right here in the land of American cheese — or as it is officially known, American pasteurized process cheese food product.
For instance, thieves broke into a pair of trucks parked in two Wisconsin cities on separate dates back in 2016 and made off with more than 60,000 pounds of cheese valued at a total of $136,000.
According to the Center for Retail Research in the United Kingdom, cheese is the world’s most frequently stolen food item, due to its worldwide appeal, high resale value and relative durability.
So, if the media outlets that carried the story about the recent Dutch cheese heist were looking for an item of “lite” news to balance out the dark, the least they could have done was to throw a bunch of cheesy puns into their headlines, like:
Grilled by Dutch detectives, suspected Gouda-grab wheelman has meltdown, cuts deal. Or:
Dutch police say they don’t know Jack about big cheese in Gouda heist. Or, maybe:
Dutch detectives whey bid to drive wedge between Gouda grift suspects by stringing plea deal.
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