Claim:
he U.S. government has a 1.4 billion pound stockpile of cheese stored in Missouri caves.
Rating:
Mostly True ( About this rating? )
What's True:
As of this publication, the U.S. government had a national stockpile of cheese totaling 1.4 billion pounds, according to data published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
What's False:
While some of the stockpiled cheese is stored in Missouri “caves,” these are largely underground warehouses specially designed for private companies to hold and age cheese. Such warehouses are located around the nation, not just in Missouri.
What's Undetermined:
Snopes could not determine the number of underground warehouses across the country or where they are located. Our requests for specific information from the USDA went unanswered.
According to some social media users, a stockpile of cheese weighing more than a billion pounds is stored in underground caves in the U.S. Midwest. One iteration of this claim suggests that between 1.4 and 1.5 billion pounds of cheese is stored in Missouri caves , as in the Reddit post below, shared in April 2024.
The USDA has 1.5 billion pounds of cheese stashed in caves in Missouri
by u/BothZookeepergame612 in interestingasfuck
The U.S. government indeed runs a program that maintains a national stockpile of cheese. As of this publication, there were 1.4 billion pounds of cheese reportedly stored around the country – though not just in Missouri. Furthermore, the so-called "caves" are largely underground warehouses specially designed for private companies to hold and age cheese, not natural and unadulterated caves in the traditional sense. Snopes was unable to confirm how many of these facilities there are or where they are located.
For the above reasons, we have rated this claim as "Mostly True."
The Cold Storage survey measures reserve food supplies held in commercial and public warehouses, writes the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), which releases its Cold Storage survey monthly. All of those records can be found on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website .
Data published on July 25, 2024, showed that as of June 2024, the most recent month available, there were more than 1.4 billion pounds of natural cheese in cold storage holdings. Cheese stocks were slightly up from the previous month.
(USDA/NASS)
While it may be true that some of these cold storage facilities are located in Missouri, that's not the only location. A report shows that natural cheese dairy products are stored in facilities across the nation and are broken up by region : New England, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, West North Central, South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Mountain and Pacific.
In Springfield, for example, the "cheese caves" aren't traditional caves but part of a 3.2-million-square-foot warehouse of leasable space, the newspaper Springfield News-Leader reported in May 2022. Dairy product storage is one part of the business. The natural temperature of the "cave" is about 60 degrees but leasers can request storage from -20 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit, making it ideal for storing food products like cheese.
The exact amount of cheese stored in these stockpiles varies based on several factors. For example, socioeconomic events can alter the amount of cheese and other agricultural products, such as produce and meat. During the COVID-19 pandemic, meat processing plants shut down and more frozen meat was consumed, according to the agricultural advocacy organization the Farm Bureau Federation of America (FBFA).
The FBFA writes that the " USDA Cold Storage survey measures reserve food supplies held in commercial and public warehouses ." The group adds:
More specifically, the survey collects data from over 800 commercial and public refrigerated warehouses in 48 states that store products at or below 50 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 days or more. The survey, mailed out around the 24th of each month, collects data on around 150 items including dairy products, fruits, nuts, vegetables, poultry and red meat.
The survey was started in 1949 as the Dairy Product Price Support Program, which would later become the Milk Price Support Program (MPSP), to "provide farmers a parity level of income."
Though it has been modified in the decades since its indoctrination, the MPSP supports prices for dairy farmers – it doesn't pay farmers directly but purchases dairy products from processors and vendors to allow farmers to be paid the mandated milk price. This parity in pricing ensures an adequate supply of milk while also allowing farmers an income to maintain production. (For more background on MPSP, see the 2022 explainer written by the nonprofit news organization Modern Farmer.)
Snopes contacted the USDA for specific information about the locations of cold storage facilities but did not receive a response at the time of this publication.
Sources:
Cadloff, Emily Baron. "Yes, the Government Really Does Stash Billions of Pounds of Cheese in Missouri Caves." Modern Farmer, 25 May 2022, https://modernfarmer.com/2022/05/cheese-caves-missouri/ .
Cross, Greta. "Missouri's Cheese Caves Store More than 7 Million Pounds of Dairy. Here's Why." Springfield News-Leader, https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/2022/05/08/springfield-cheese-cave-missouri-dairy-companies-store-7-million-pounds/6785381001/ . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
Publication | Cheese Cold Storage, U.S. - Monthly Graph | ID: 70795767w | USDA Economics, Statistics and Market Information System. https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/70795767w?locale=es . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
USDA - National Agricultural Statistics Service - Surveys - Cold Storage. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Cold_Storage/index.php . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
---. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Cold_Storage/index.php . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
"USDA Cold Storage Survey's Importance to Livestock Producers." American Farm Bureau Federation, https://www.fb.org/market-intel/usda-cold-storage-surveys-importance-to-livestock-producers . Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.
Most Popular
Comments / 0