The Right Just Discovered Tillamook’s Halal Cheese. They’re About 10 Years Late.

The cheese didn’t change. A vegetarian enzyme did its job in 2016, and America’s outrage machine just declared jihad on cheddar.

Tillamook, Oregon (The Daily Whatever Press)—Buckle the fuck up, America, because the Satanic Panic is back, and this time it’s in the dairy case.

Last week, the outrage-industrial complex discovered that Tillamook — the farmer-owned Oregon co-op that has been making cheddar since 1909 — prints a little “Certified Halal” mark on its packages. Brigitte Gabriel of ACT for America warned that “corporations keep groveling to Islam.” Gunther Eagleman called it “a deliberate business decision to make the product meet Islamic dietary standards.” Gasp! And someone posting as @1800factsmatter, a handle that should be prosecuted for fraud, announced, “You can keep your Al-Qaeda cheese Tillamook.”

Al-Qaeda cheese. For a block of medium cheddar. Somewhere a Homeland Security analyst is drawing red string between a cheese curd and a cave in Tora Bora.

Here’s the terrifying truth. In 2016, Tillamook switched its rennet — the enzyme that turns milk into cheese — from the old-school stuff to a version made by fermentation. Why? To “minimize the risk of a bitter flavor.” That “new” rennet happens to be vegetarian, and it happens to qualify as both kosher and halal. That’s it. That’s the jihad. A microbe did its job, and the cheddar got less bitter. The only thing getting radicalized here is the fucking lactose.

And the label isn’t new. Tillamook was answering questions about it on Target’s website in 2022. Dana Loesch — yes, NRA-TV Dana fucking Loesch — looked at this mess and said, “It’s not like they’re doing some sort of special Muslim ceremony.” When Dana Loesch is the voice of reason, you have driven the clown car off the clown cliff into the clown ocean.

A certification is paperwork. Somebody checks your ingredients and your equipment, then signs a form. Nobody is baptizing the Colby Jack. As a secular Jew who skipped his bar mitzvah on purpose at thirteen, I can report that about 40 percent of America’s packaged food carries kosher certification, and not one bite of it has made me any more Jewish. Coca-Cola has been kosher since 1935. Oreos went kosher in 1997, after rabbis went through Nabisco’s ovens with blowtorches. You have been dunking rabbi-approved cookies in your milk for almost thirty years, and nobody woke up circumcised (well, not more circumcised, anyway).

So welcome, Tillamook, to the Dumb Boycott Hall of Fame. Your fellow inductees:

In 2015, Starbucks cups were too plain — red, sure, but no snowflakes — which is how you start a war on Christmas with a latte. In 2017, Sean Hannity fans smashed their own Keurig machines because Keurig pulled its ads from his show while he was busy defending Roy Moore. In 2018, grown men set their own Nikes on fire over Colin Kaepernick, and Nike’s online sales went up anyway. In 2023, Kid Rock machine-gunned cases of Bud Light he had already bought. In 2025, Cracker Barrel took Uncle Herschel off its logo, the Republic nearly fell, and the old man was back on the sign within a week.

See the pattern? These people keep destroying shit they already paid for. Keurig got the money. Nike got the money. Anheuser-Busch got the money. Pssst. You’re doing “boycott” wrong. Normally you don’t give them the freaking money first, you red-hatted dodos.

Which brings us to this week’s MVP, a woman posting as OK81Gigi, who threw her Tillamook straight into the garbage and declared, “Amish cheese for us from now on.”

Amish cheese. She fled the scary religious cheese for cheese made by people who won’t use zippers because of their religion. She escaped a dietary certificate by running directly into the arms of the Ordnung. That’s like fleeing a Unitarian bake sale to join a monastery. And Tillamook? Tillamook already cashed her check, and is laughing all the way to the bank.

Look, I love this cheese. I will not hear a word against the extra sharp. You can keep your Kraft or your Beecher’s or whatever that Kroger Select brand is. Tillamook cheddars are just…*chef’s kiss*.

And I’m old enough to remember the last time we did this. In the ’80s, it was Dungeons & Dragons turning kids into Satanists. By 1990, Judas Priest was in a Reno courtroom defending itself against backmasked messages nobody could actually hear. Same con every time: find a symbol, tell people it’s poisoning their kids, sell the fear, and pass the collection plate.

“Halal” means “permissible.” That’s all the little mark says: a Muslim family can eat this, too. That’s what they’re really mad about. Not that the cheese changed. That somebody else gets to sit at the table and eat cheese also.

Tillamook didn’t convert to anything. It just made room for more people to eat. Now shut up and pass the fucking cheddar.

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