Am I the only one who doesn't see how this is supposed to guard against couterfeits?
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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It's probably something like an RFID tag that you can scan to check if the cheese is authentic.
I will eat so much that the cheese-lords will be able to track me across the globe.
Will kraft follow suit with their American cheese?
How good is this counterfeit cheese if you have to invest cheese DRM?
At what point does it stop being a counterfeit cheese and became a real cheese made somewhere outside the origin protection?
if it's cheese, it's real, lol- like "fake boobs are real enough, if i can touch them they're real" but the whole point of DOC or whatever regional protections Europe puts in place I think are about supporting the economies of the region as much as guaranteeing authenticity... the microchips make sense in that context... if someone can fake a wheel of parmesan and disrupt the supply, it will affect demand for the legitimate product and take a customer away from the region the DOC/DOP was meant to protect in the first place. Or just ignore me, honestly I don't have a dog in this race and I'm not even 100% sure I'm right
Fair point, i have a bottle of 25 year old aceto balsamico in the kitchen with a DOP on it and I probably wouldn't buy one without it.
But at what point does a counterfet become just as good?
DRM: Dairy Rind Management
I assume it's like the whole Champagne only comes from Champagne. Are their other sparkling wines that taste as good, I'm sure. But they want to sell a name.
Kentucky tried to do the same with Bourbon Whiskey, saying if it was made outside of Kentucky you'd have to call it something else, but I don't believe that stuck
You are correct, it did not stick, but by US law Bourbon does have to be made in the US. Associating alcohols to a region has always been a tedious argument, but distilled alcohol is especially silly. For things like Champagne they can claim things like the soil of the area impacts the flavor (Vidalia onions), the culture of specific grapes in the region are important (this isolated variety of grapes are only cultivated here), or maybe something in the air contributes to the process (Belgian sours), but Bourbon just requires it be made with at least 51% corn and stored in a charred oak barrel.
Bourbon may have originated from Kentucky there is nothing about Kentucky or the US that impacts the process. I can make IPAs without being in the UK and I can make Berliner Weisse without going to Germany, I see no difference with Bourbon.
I agree, I'm going to mention something I've mentioned before though because I love it as a base for why one world one human should be prevent. (BS I just made up now). When France and Italy got hit hard by root rot, trade ended up happening with the U.S. as in people found roots in California and elsewhere did not suffer the same rot, so they grafted the grapes onto roots from the americas to ensure all of Italy/Frances vineyards didn't die, in the trading it also led to California finding access to many of the grapes that were used in Europe, thus making it a very good grower of modern day wines. It's how the world should work on my opinion, not about the profit side, but about the survival side and helping each other overcome devastating events that could change areas forever
It's more a self-defense measure - while there are perfectly good counterfeit cheeses out there, if someone gets a really crappy piece or there's food poisoning traced back to a counterfeit cheese this lets them prove it wasn't their fault, thus avoiding a hit to the brand reputation and/or avoid liability.
Scammer reads p-chip patent, realises there's only a small range of laser diode wavelengths that can penetrate cheese. Buys chipped cheese, breaks the cheese. Chipped pieces found using laser excitation pulse and sensor with a notch filter. Save the wedge with the most chips to repeatedly break down to get chipped cheese crumbs, insert into bogus wedges, profit.
I'm sure the idea can be refined, but I'll leave the fine details to the dairy delinquent curd counterfeiters.
To embed the p-Chip in a Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese wheel, the chip is inserted into a casein label on the cheese wheel, which becomes part of the cheese rind during its preparation process. Cheese buyers aren't going to eat this embedded label.
They're not liberally sprinkling the cheese with microchips that can be picked out, they're sticking single chips on full wheels.
Fair enough, read the tech stack more than the implementation. It makes me wonder why not RFID or NFC instead? The only substantial difference would be antenna size and visibility, my only hinch is that it'd be an appearance thing
I'm guessing it's down to food regulations - I don't think there are edible NFC implementations available (I suspect it's down to the power requirements, as far as I can tell the reason they use light stimulation for power transfer instead of the normal inductive method is so that you don't need the large receiving antenna, which probably makes it more "edible"?), even though it's clearly the superior option.
I would rather buy the cheese without microchips
Yeah same tbh.
I don't care if Big Parm tracks me. As long as they don't stop making parmigiano reggiano they can do whatever they like to me.
Really? Cheese DRM? What's next, they hit you with a DMCA claiming it's nacho cheeze?
It might go all the way to the top, but it definitely comes out the bottom.
Presumably the counterfeit cheese doesn't have these chips. Therefore I'll make sure to only purchase counterfeit cheese.
Probably cheaper too
That's... a lot of fucking cheese...
mods this one right here
i don't care what you do with your cheese behind closed doors and i will fight to the death for your right to do it but please be less creepy about it
You're so original. No really, do you come up with this stuff on the fly or do you keep a notepad full of witty ways to reply to people who use swearwords on the internet?
I have a databank in Burbank that gets updated fairly regularly, why?
Do you want The String Cheese Incident? Because this is how you get The String Cheese Incident.
what?
Dont fuck the cheese, it's for eating
I guess the joke is about fucking cheese
Eat verification wheel.
They're making the microsplastics worse. This is gonna end up in ~~marine~~ ecosystems. Idk how well sewage treatment can isolate this.
This is our generations 'lead in everything'.
i mean, i read about something using... not quite nanotechnology but slightly larger scale, building their chips off of cornstarch based chips (basically using carbon chains from corn to build the chips. i wish i could remember the paper. all that stuck with me was "heh, molecular corn chips thats funny")
It is hilarious to me to watch people freak out about micro plastics in their Tupperware or whatever when the vast majority are coming from their Lululemon tights and SUV tires.
You're right but I think that most of those people are worried about consuming micro plastics and are less concerned about the effects on the environment. So most people aren't munching on their tires or Lululemons ^unless you're into that sort of thing...^
The water is the environment man and you need it to live.
The call is coming from inside the house.
You use your tires, they wear off then it rains and the result ends up in the water table. You wash your clothes the water ends up back in the water table after all the microplastics are worn off from the washing.
Water treatment does not remove 100 percent of the micro plastics.
You drink the water.
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OK, but how does this even work? Is it a tiny NFC tag or something? Does your body digest it, or does it just pass through you because it's really small, like a single microplastic?
And during the time it passes through you, you're briefly authentic parmesan cheese.
I always said I would make something of myself one day.
It's probably to track the cheese before it's eaten... but if it is eaten, it'll pass through without harm. Whether it would still work for tracking after it's been eaten, idk
I know that the dose makes the poison and all, but i imagine cheesebreathers prefer less added arsenic
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I wish they showed what it looks like. I honestly can't understand how this works. Almost all parm i have is grated so wouldn't it be noticeable during the grating process? Or is it that small it avoids being chopped up.
A grain of sand is too small, it would pass a grater.
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