The Neal’s Yard heist: Why luxury cheese is being targeted by criminals

Neal’s Yard Dairy says it plans to use a less high-tech approach to preventing future fraud, including visiting buyers in person when big cheese orders are made, rather than relying on digital contracts and emails.

As for what will become of the cheddar stolen in the October heist, there may be no swift solution: given that they could easily be stored for as long as two years, the cheese could still surface many months from now.

“A criminal could hide tonnes away and then pass them slowly, truckle by truckle, into supply chains,” says Ben Lambourne of the online retailer Pong Cheese.

For the cheesemakers, this isn’t just about a stolen food; the missing Hafod, Westcombe and Pitchfork represent ways of farming and food production that took thousands of years to evolve, shaped landscapes and became part of British culture, yet which have been all but lost in just a few generations.

Lancashire-based cheesemonger Andy Swinscoe says that at the beginning of the 20th Century, in the area surrounding his shop there were 2,000 farmhouse cheesemakers. Today, there are just five. There have been declines in Somerset with cheddar makers, in the East Midlands with Stilton and in the north-west with Cheshire cheese.

“It would be impossible for these small family farms to survive by selling liquid milk,” says Swinscoe – but they can add value by turning their milk into a farmhouse cheese.

Patrick Holden admits that the financial loss from this theft would have had a huge impact on his farm. “A fraud of this scale can easily spell the end of a farm and cheesemaking.” In this instance, Neal’s Yard paid its suppliers in full, describing the effect of the fraud on their business as “a significant financial blow”.

Unless crimes like this are stopped, however, other farms and businesses will suffer similar blows, particularly when luxury cheese remains sought-after and prized.

“Conflicts around the world, the cost-of-living crisis, even climate change, all increase the appeal for food fraud,” says the NFCU’s Andy Quinn. Until that changes, cheesemakers might need to tighten up their security – and think twice when an order seems too good to be true.