High-Profile Cheese Heists Are on the Rise. Here’s Why.

You may not be aware of it, but there’s been a string of cheese heists all across the world lately. Folks aren’t just stealing packs of Kraft Singles or Babybells. We’re talking about high-profile cheese thefts ranging from thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands. But why? The CBC’s Natalie Stechyson looked into it. Recently, the British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a Whole Foods cheese heist worth CAD $12,800. In the UK, 22 tons of cheddar worth over $389,000 USD were stolen. In 2016, thieves in Wisconsin made off with $46,000 worth of cheese. Also back in 2016, some crooks stole €80,000 worth of Parmigiano Reggiano in northern Italy. ## Videos by VICE At the time, Italy’s Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which sounds like a faction of well-dressed Italian assassins from the *John Wick* universe, told CBS News that about $7 million worth of Parmigiano Reggiano had been stolen between 2014 and 2016. Luxury cheese varieties are targeted because they resell for astronomical sums of money on the black market and are pretty difficult to detect. That last part is important. If people were stealing, say, Kobe beef, it would be pretty easy to tell because there would be a sudden influx of Kobe showing up on plates at a certain restaurant somewhere. But cheese tends to be an ingredient that blends into a main dish, effectively rendering it undetectable. As global food prices have risen since the pandemic first struck, the value of these already expensive cheeses has skyrocketed so, when things are costly and in short supply, the thieves come out smelling opportunity. Aged cheeses are particularly pungent to the noses of prospective thieves, as they were already wildly expensive even without worldwide inflation jacking up the prices. Who’s buying these illicit cheeses? Small mom-and-pop restaurants looking for a competitive edge who can use high-end cheeses that they’re buying for relatively cheap because they fell off a truck.