Thanks for the interesting read!

My condolences on the state of the US food industry as a whole, and dairy in particular. As a European who loves their cheeses, it saddens me how a product that’s not cheap but accessible can be gatekept economically like that in the US.

Don’t be hard on yourself about it though, to me this is a systemic failure. You clearly did your research, even though the “cheese platter” available to you is small and mostly gross ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

If you’re looking for a hobby though: making cheese yourself doesn’t require any expensive stuff except milk (and in some cases time). You may have come across making mozzarella at home, which you can do in a day. But other cheese is possible too: apparently you can make a young cheese with yoghurt as the culture which starts fermentation!

My guess is they’ll ship them off to Israel as soon as consequences are a real possibility. People accused of pedophilia often do the same thing and get away with it.

This kind of border agent is why I won’t be travelling to the US anytime soon. If this person was that bad in 2000, imagine what they’re like with the power to send you to a concentration camp if you look at them the wrong way.

IMO this should be the case for everything developed using public money, looking at you, pharmaceutical companies…