DEKYAS NEWS World Breaking News and Trusted Source
Related Articles
Some of the recent robberies have been sophisticated, risky and lucrative.
They have caught our attention, stirred our interest sympathyand stimulated our imagination. Maybe it's because we love a decent crime story – whether the thieves are thwarted or make off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen goods.
Or maybe it's just the fact that what they're stealing is cheese. Luxury cheese actually.
On Thursday, BC RCMP revealed they recently thwarted an attempted cheese robbery at Whole Foods in North Vancouver. They had been on patrol on September 29 when they found a cart full of cheese outside the supermarket. A suspect fled on foot, leaving behind $12,800 worth of cheese.
This latest attempted heist comes as the cheese world continues to be in turmoil following a British cheese heist in which scammers made off with more than £300,000 (or more than $540,000 Cdn) worth of cloth-bound, award-winning cheddar. Recently, a 63-year-old man was arrested and released on bail.
The cheese – 950 wheels of cheddar weighing 22 tonnes, stolen from Neal's Yard Dairy in London – has not been recovered.
But why cheese?
“We suspect cheese is being targeted due to its high retail value on the black market,” a spokesperson for North Vancouver RCMP Media Relations told CBC News in an emailed statement.
As soon as a product increases significantly in price in a short period of time, such as cheese, you attract the attention of organized crime, explains Prof. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.
“You don't steal pounds and pounds of a product unless you know who you're going to sell it to. We're clearly dealing with organized groups who are actually finding new markets.”
The cheese black market
According to Statistics Canadathe monthly average retail price of a 500-gram block of cheese in Canada has increased from $5.92 in September 2019 to $6.86 in September 2024 – a price increase of 16 percent.
But prices become higher as the cheeses become more exclusive. At Loblaws 280 grams Balderson aged cheddar costs $10.49. If you want some Bothwell smoked Gouda, it will cost you $17.27 for 540 grams Walmart. And 200 grams of Tre Stelle Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese costs $13.29 Subway.
Meanwhile, a new report on the Canadian cheese market from analytics firm ResearchAndMarkets.com says “the Canadian cheese industry is experiencing a significant resurgence” and predicts the market will be worth more than $5 billion by 2028.
Yes, cheese is expensive, but it hasn't risen more dramatically than other foods in Canada, says Michael von Massow, a professor of food agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph. What makes it such a target for thieves, he suspects, is “an underground way to increase margins” and reduce input costs for small businesses like restaurants, bakeries and convenience stores.
In other words, the thieves probably have buyers lined up.
“It's something that you have to convert quite quickly and probably because it's on the black market … and it's selling at a discount,” Von Massow said.
Cheese, like butter – also a common target for thieves – can also be more easily reused and harder to trace than some other stolen items because it is an ingredient rather than a finished product, he added.
“Once it's in the kitchen, it disappears. It changes shape. There's no serial number and it's hard to tell where it came from, especially once it's transformed.”
Hot cheese
The annual global cost of illegal trade and fraud in the food sector is estimated at between $30 billion and $50 billion, according to a recent report by the World Trade Organization. And according to Britain Center for Retail ResearchIn the early 2000s, cheese was the most stolen product in Britain and Europe.
In 2022, thieves stole 161 wheels of cheese worth about $32,000 Cdn from a Dutch cheesemonger, according to to the New York Times. Dairy farms in the Netherlands are frequently under fire with the website Dutch news reported in 2016 that 8,500 kilos of Dutch cheese had been stolen in the previous year, worth approximately $135,000.
Police in Guelph, Ontario, say there have been seven “major” butter thefts in the past 10 months, including two in October. The most recent cases resulted in losses of more than $900 each.
Italy is also often a target for Parmigiano Reggiano thieves. In 2016, CBS reported that approximately $9.7 million worth of hard Italian cheese had been stolen over the past two years.
The US is not immune, with 20,000 pounds of fresh Wisconsin cheese worth about $64,000 nabbed by 'cheese bandits' in 2016. And in Canada, thieves made off with $187,000 worth of cheese from Saputo Dairy Products in Tavistock, Ontario, in 2019.
In 2022, cheese was the second most stolen supermarket item in Canada, after meat Canadian Press.
In Britain, where thieves recently made off with $540,000 worth of award-winning cheddar, experts say cost is to blame.
“The retail price of cheddar has increased by 6.5 percent through May 2024,” said dairy industry specialist Patrick McGuigan. told BBC News last week. “This is why we see security tags on blocks of cheddar in grocery stores. Based on price alone, cheese is one of the most desirable foods a criminal can steal.”
Investigation ongoing
In Thursday's press release about the foiled cheese robbery at Whole Foods, the North Vancouver RCMP noted that they were able to stop the theft because they “proactively patrolled high-crime areas to prevent and deter crime.”
“We often conduct proactive patrols around shopping centers, such as the location where North Vancouver Whole Foods is located,” they explained in their statement to CBC News, while adding that their investigation is ongoing and that they are “exploring all possible avenues of investigation will investigate.
But some people on
“Charcuterie is expensive,” wrote X user Tiffany Trowson.
“It's true that quality charcuterie isn't cheap, but neither are the consequences of stealing it!” the RCMP responded.
