How to Make Sure That's Really Swiss Cheese

Housed at -112F in a Bern freezer is the Swiss cheesemakers’ secret weapon against forgeries. That’s where government scientists keep 10,000 strains of milk bacteria that can be used to identify copycats. The country’s cheese industry, with 604 million Swiss francs ($658 million) in exports last year, has turned to DNA fingerprinting to fight counterfeits, which Emmental producers estimate have cost them as much as 20 million Swiss francs annually.

Forgeries contribute to declining revenue for an industry already beleaguered by high production costs; and the rising Swiss franc also makes the country’s cheese more costly abroad. Exports of Emmental, for example, sank 18 percent in terms of volume in the first half of 2014. Even worse, the Switzerland Cheese Marketing industry association estimates that about 10 percent of cheese labeled as Swiss-made Emmental on supermarket shelves worldwide isn’t real.