Cheer cheese

History

Fred Walker, after learning of James L. Kraft's cheese processing method, travelled to the United States and secured the Australian rights. In 1925, he partnered with Kraft, and the Kraft Walker Cheese Co. was registered in May 1926. Around July 1931, the company began marketing a cheese called "Red Coon," described as not processed but finely matured by a secret method, giving it a distinctive flavour and smooth consistency. It was advertised as being two years old.

Cyril Callister, who had formulated Vegemite and the processed cheese recipe, was chief scientist. In November 1934, Kraft Walker leased the Warrnambool Cheese and Butter factory at Allansford and soon expanded it. Red Coon was originally coated in red wax, later replaced by cellophane; the red stripe in the current logo references this packaging. Production paused in December 1942 due to World War II and resumed in June 1948 at Allansford and Quinalow, Queensland.

On 7 October 1949, Kraft Foods registered the trademark "COON" in the US. In November 1951, a new factory opened in Northgate, Brisbane, with a cool store for Red Coon made at Quinalow. The cheese was often described as "mature" in 1950s advertisements, though one article excluded it from the category of Cheddar cheeses. Red Coon was mentioned in the Queensland Parliament in December 1958 during a discussion on cheese grading.

Naming controversy

The former name Coon, which matched a racial slur, was defended by previous manufacturers Kraft Foods and Dairy Farmers despite long-running campaigns to change it. Activist Stephen Hagan challenged the name through the Australian Human Rights Commission in 1999 and the Advertising Standards Bureau in 2001. Some opponents of the change argued the term was not derogatory in Australia, but Hagan and reporter Destiny Rogers, in their e-book COON: More Holes than Swiss Cheese, presented evidence that it was used as a slur against Indigenous Australians and other people of colour, especially between the 1870s and 1939 and again from the 1970s.

Hagan renewed his challenge in 2008, noting that Dairy Farmers had told him the cheese was named after Edward Coon, a story Hagan said the brand owners only began telling in the 1980s. Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Australia, Saputo Inc. announced on 24 July 2020 that the name would change. On 13 January 2021, Lino A. Saputo announced the new name as "Cheer" cheese, stating that treating people with respect and without discrimination is a basic principle.

As of 2021, Hagan is seeking legal damages for what he describes as 21 years of corporations undermining his claims that the brand was not named after William Edward Coon.

Coon's process

Edward William Coon, a cheesemaker from Philadelphia, secured a patent in 1926 for a rapid cheese-aging process that relied on heat and moisture while deliberately avoiding pasteurisation. Before selling his operations, he had run 14 cheese factories in New York State. In 1928, he joined the Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company in Philadelphia, selling his ripening patent and staying on as manager until his death in 1934. Kraft began selling a product called "Kraft Coon cheese" in the United States around October 1942, though it did not register the trademark until 1949.