Tuesday, 20 October 2009

• You Try Shipping a Block of Vegan Cheese Across International Borders

  This is a guest blog from Veggie Wedgie.
  

  
  

  Daiya cheese is the new vegan cheese that everyone is going crazy about. What’s all the hype? Daiya is a soy-free vegan cheese that melts and stretches like dairy cheese.
  

  Melts and stretches? No soy? No casein to make it stretch? Also it’s free from other common allergens like gluten, wheat, barley, corn, rice and nuts. It sounds to good to be true right? You can read all about it’s nutritional profile here.

  As you can imagine, I was dying to try some Daiya. I tried ordering some from Vegan Essentials, but I had to ship with a courier for faster delivery so that the cheese wouldn’t go bad. A few days later I got a call from the customs, saying I received a product and had to go to the airport to clear my product through the customs.
  

  Great, I thought. Not only did I pay a lot of money to the shipping company that would supposedly bring my package fast and delivered to my doorstep, but now I had to actually go get it myself, pay more money to the Greek government and waste my time and brain cells dealing with the people.
  

  First I went to the courier company’s desk and paid 15 Euros for what I thought was storage, but it turned out it wasn’t for that. Then I went before another set of people who asked me what my package had inside. When they opened it and saw this “thing” that looked like shredded cheese, they gave me a weird look and said that I had to go to the chemistry lab to get it checked to see if it is safe to enter Greece. Vegan cheese is dangerous – 'specially for the dairy industry.

  To the chemistry lab I went, which was in another building. I walked through and empty lab and found some offices. I gave my package of shredded vegan cheese to the scientist to check it. He looked at, then looked at me. Asked what it was. I explained. His eyes were open wide, while he said “but nature made cheese from animals, why would you want to eat this?”
  

  Well, I thought, I haven’t come across any cheese trees or cheese seeds in my life. So as far as I know, humans made cheese. I kept that thought to myself, ignoring the obvious and tried to avoid going into meaningless conversations. He called another scientist to see it and they came to the conclusion that since it is not made of any animal products, it’s not cheese. Again, I agreed, as I did not want to confuse them, I just wanted to get out of there. I paid 5 euros for that “lab test." The product was not tested in a lab; it was looked at.

  Anyways, back to the storage building I went to fill out some papers and then back to the other building to a line of different desks, where I signed things, blah blah blah. In the end, I paid only 9 euros tax (indeed I was lucky in all my misfortunes) and another 14 euros for “storage” as my parcel stayed there 1 day. That was a quick summary, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some other stupid things that happened.

  By they way Daiya cheese is freaking awesome! I mean check out the picture. It really is worth a thousand words. I just wish it was easier to get it in Greece without smuggling it...

  
  

  Have you ever tried Daiya? Did you have to cross the desert on a turtle to get it?
  

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