Ask anyone in the nation where cheese comes from, and odds are they’ll say Wisconsin. Ask University of Wisconsin System schools where their cheese comes from, and the wrapper might name any number of wannabes. A bill introduced in the state Assembly this week by Rep. Jeff Smith, D-Eau Claire, would end this travesty and require UW schools to purchase Wisconsin cheese.
While some shortsighted penny pinchers insist that UW simply buy the cheapest products available, the obvious probity of this proposal is staggering. If you went to Mexico and bought a poncho, you would be pretty peeved if the label said, “Made in China.” And when visiting Dairy State-funded universities, no one expects to eat Californian or that godforsaken New York cheese.
But the reasons for this proposal go far beyond state pride and the superior quality of Wisconsin cheese products. In fact, they go far beyond our lifetimes to the future viability of this planet. In America today, the food we buy from grocery stores is trucked 27 times farther than food from local sources, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. As these semi-trucks crisscross the nation supplying chain grocery outlets, Americans all too often drive past local suppliers on the way to buy food produced 1,500 miles away.
Of course, buying cheese locally isn’t going to reconstitute the polar ice caps. Yet, with our government unwilling to take substantive proactive steps to combat climate change, conscientious Americans and state governments can only chip in to a grassroots effort with an aim no loftier than the salvation of our race.
If attempts to improve the environment in progressive communities spread to industrial urban areas and eventually suburban enclaves, the national political parties will have no choice but to seize the momentum of the new environmentalism.
By gaining support from small pockets in critical presidential battlegrounds, this movement could compel candidates to sign on to an extensive worldwide climate change pact. A signal from the United States that we are serious about confronting the perils of the greenhouse effect would literally change the world. It may seem like a far-flung proposition now, but even the thickest head of hair began with a single strand. We don’t need cheese to be shipped across the country when it is abundant here at home.
UW is not a private corporation, and while free-market principles are important to institutional success, they aren’t the only factor. Our university should strive to represent and promote state industry to the fullest extent possible. The hypocrisy of a state promoting the quality of its cheese throughout the nation while importing dairy products for its students is more than evident.
So what if some outside cheese costs slightly less than Wisconsin cheese? The UW System gets a majority of its funding from taxpayer dollars, so why not insist a larger portion of that money be reinvested in industries that pay taxes here?
Detractors of this argument will insist that pro-local cheesers are motivated by a misguided fervor for state pride, willfully ignoring the importance of principle. Let’s face it, these are the same types of buzzkills who are campaigning against the giant Fonz statue in downtown Milwaukee. Even having this argument is an insult to the mouth-watering cheese that has coated my belly since conception. That’s right, my mom had cheese cravings.
In the eternal words of the Fonz in a 1974 episode of ?Happy Days,? ?You ain’t nobody until you do what you want!? And all I want to do is eat Wisconsin cheese on the UW campus.
Bassey Etim ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and journalism.
