[Gnomes]

Not sure how true this is but...

This is a little tidbit a friend of mine learned while doing a co-op at a factory that made cheese.

The cheese would originally be formed into huge blocks (I can't remember exact dimensions... but we're talking about a 6 foot cube).

It would then be put on palettes to "age". It would be moved around by forklift, etc.

When the cheese was ready to be packaged and sold, they would retrieve the huge block of cheese and the first thing they would do is cut off all of the sides since they were "exposed for weeks while the cheese aged. This outer layer of cheese would be MOLDY and DIRTY. There would be stones and other crap stuck in the cheese so this isn't only mold that we are talking about here. This material that was cut off the outside of the block was then weighed and thrown in a huge bin. They would do this with various kinds of cheeses until the bin was full. They could then turn this disgusting, moldy, dirty cheese into "processed cheese" by processing it and adding other "stuff" to the mix (based on how much of each kind of cheese was in the bin, they could bring the cheese back to a standard "processed cheese"). Technically the cheese is fine to eat because the process it goes through kills all bacteria, etc. and stones and whatnot also get filtered out.

My friend would not each processed cheese however... so that spoke volumes to me.

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/3596049-post120/