the railroads brought country products to the city while they were still at their best Modern Decline The modern decline of cheesemaking has its roots in that same golden age Cheese and butter factories were born in the United States, a country with no cheesemaking tradition, just 70 years after the Revolution In 1851, an upstate New York dairy farmer named Jesse Williams agreed to make cheese for neighboring farms, and by the end of the Civil War there were hundreds of such “associated” dairies, whose economic advantages brought them success throughout the industrialized world In the 1860s and ’70s, pharmacies and then pharmaceutical companies began mass-producing rennet At the turn of the century scientists in Denmark, the United States, and France brought more standardization in the form of pure microbial cultures for curdling and ripening cheese, which had once been accomplished by the local, complex flora of each cheesemaker’s dairy The crowning blow to cheese diversity and quality was World War II In continental Europe, agricultural lands became battlefields, and dairying was devastated During the prolonged recovery, quality standards were suspended, factory production was favored for its economies of scale and ease of regulation, and consumers were grateful for any approximation of the prewar good life Inexpensive standardized cheese rose to dominance Ever since, most cheese in Europe and the United States has been made in factories Even in France, which in 1973 established a certification program (“Fromage appellation d’origine contrôlée”) to indicate that a cheese has been made by traditional methods and in the traditional area of production, less than 20% of the total national production qualifies In the United States, the market for process cheese, a mixture of aged ... During the prolonged recovery, quality standards were suspended, factory production was favored for its economies of scale and ease of regulation, and consumers were grateful for any approximation of the prewar... established a certification program (? ??Fromage appellation d’origine contrôlée”) to indicate that a cheese has been made by traditional methods and in the traditional area of production, less than 20% of the total national...local, complex flora of each cheesemaker’s dairy The crowning blow to cheese diversity and quality was World War II In continental Europe, agricultural lands became battlefields, and dairying was devastated