National Cheese Day comes down to a board, a knife and whatever is worth cutting into. Buy a wedge of something you have never tried, and give it good bread and a quiet half hour.
No founder, establishing act or first observance has been documented for National Cheese Day, and the Federal Register carries no document naming it. The earliest evidence located is a holiday listing archived in August 2019, which dates the listing rather than the day.
There is a passage in the Code of Federal Regulations about type size on a cheese label. It exists because manufacturers used to play down the qualifying words on a package so that the word cheese would be the one a shopper noticed.
National Cheese Day lands on a subject the United States has gone to unusual lengths to pin down. Federal standards of identity decide what a food has to be before it may be sold under a given cheese name. Getting that name right is a legal matter rather than a marketing one.
That is a lot of packages to name correctly. American plants turned out 14.8 billion pounds of cheese in 2025, a figure that excludes cottage cheeses.
DEALS & OFFERS
National Cheese Day ran on June 4. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.
The Food and Drug Administration does not only regulate cheese. It regulates the names, and the names come in a ladder, where each rung permits something the rung above it does not.
Pasteurized process cheese is one or more cheeses ground up and mixed with an emulsifying agent, then heated for not less than 30 seconds at a temperature of not less than 150 °F. A rung below sits pasteurized process cheese food, which is allowed dairy ingredients that are not cheese. Below that again is pasteurized process cheese spread, whose moisture must be more than 44 percent and no more than 60 percent.
The names got long, and long names created a temptation. The regulations record that manufacturers took to subordinating the words pasteurized, blended, process, food and spread, so that the word cheese was the one given undue prominence.
The answer sits at 21 CFR 133.10, and it is not a fine or a ban. Every word of the legal name should be given equal prominence, the section says, and the plainest way to manage that is to print the whole name in letters of the same size, color and style of type, on the same background.
The standards are precise enough that stepping outside one takes permission. In April 2023 the agency issued a temporary permit to Bongards' Creameries, a Minnesota dairy cooperative, over a single ingredient: extra virgin olive oil, used to stop slices sticking together.
The cooperative then petitioned to change the standard itself. In June 2025 the agency narrowed the permit to pasteurized process cheese alone and extended it, until either a final rule amends the standard or 30 days after the petition is denied.
National Cheese Day itself has no documented author. No founder, establishing act or first observance has been recorded for it, so what the day actually marks is the food and the rules that shape it rather than anybody's campaign.
TIMELINE
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
A 60-day cure is what carries raw milk cheese across state lines.
Federal rules bar a milk product in final package form from interstate commerce unless the product itself has been pasteurized, or all of its dairy ingredients have, and then point at the cheese standards for the alternative. That alternative is a cure at not less than 35 °F for not less than 60 days.
In the ingredient list on a pasteurized process cheese food, cheddar, washed curd, colby or granular cheese, or any mixture of two or more of them, may be designated as American cheese. The phrase is a permission the regulation grants rather than the name of its own standardized variety.
When the Food and Drug Administration built its raw milk cheese survey it wanted the sample to mirror the domestic and imported mix on the market, and could not, because the federal government does not track how much raw milk cheese is produced. The agency noted that USDA's Economic Research Service follows the supply and commercial use of cheese but holds no figures specific to raw milk cheese.
BY THE NUMBERS
MYTH VS FACT
National Cheese Day was first established in 1914 in Monroe, Wisconsin.
The 1914 event was Cheese Days, a Wisconsin festival that has never been held in June. Every dated edition on the festival's own timeline, from 1914 through to the 2026 one set for September 18 to 20, falls in September or October.
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No. It is an unofficial observance rather than a public holiday, so June 4 is a normal working day, and the Federal Register carries no document naming it.
COLOPHON
Some cheese is meant to be eaten young, and some is meant to be waited for. National Cheese Lover’s Day is a fair excuse to go looking for the older sort, and to eat it slowly enough to notice the grain.
Calling all cheese lovers! It's time to indulge in all things cheesy for American Cheese Month - from grilled cheese sandwiches to mac and cheese, let's celebrate our love for this delicious dairy delight.
Celebrate Swiss Cheese Day with the best fondue recipes and cheesy dishes - it's time to get cheesy!
