What happens to that Mothais sur Feuille (above) after it leaves the creamery in France? If the cheese is coming to a shop where I live, in Napa Valley, it’s traveling 5,500 miles. The journey is tedious enough if you’re human, but if you’re a steadily ripening cheese, delay can be a death sentence. MIT professor of anthropology Heather Paxson has researched the logistics of cheese importing and recently delivered an illuminating talk on the topic at SOAS Food Studies Centre in London. We spoke by phone afterward so I could dive deeper.

Your talk shines a light on the particular challenges of importing cheese. Why did this interest you as a research subject?

I spend a lot of time at a cheese shop where I live, and I hear stories, like why a particular cheese is not available right now. Another reason is I had become familiar with a lot of imported cheeses, then traveled to Europe and had the same cheeses and noticed a difference. Maybe they’re eaten at a younger age, or I was finally getting an unpasteurized version. I was curious about that difference.

Can you describe the path of a wheel of Brie from the French producer to a San Francisco cheese shop? How much time would that entail?

We’ll talk about shipping rather than air freight. An order will be placed with a producer, then prepared for shipment and sent to Rungis, the wholesale food market outside of Paris. At Rungis, orders are collected and prepared for shipment to the U.S. Most shipments go from the French port of Le Havre to New York/New Jersey. While the boat is at sea, the shipment undergoes risk-analysis screening, and the paperwork is reviewed for compliance. The ship takes a week to cross, then the cheese is unloaded, reconsolidated on trucks and transported to its destination. To go from rural France to a Boston-area cheese store takes a minimum of three weeks, and probably an extra three days to get to California. That’s if all goes well.

You describe paperwork that is so arcane and cumbersome that many importers use a third party to do it. It sounds like, no matter how well intentioned you are, it’s easy to get the paperwork wrong. Like putting the wrong class code on the shipment.

Or inadvertently printing an out-of-date label. The requirements for labels change frequently and it’s hard to keep up. And mistakes can happen on both sides. [Paxson means that inspectors make mistakes, too.] What happens then? An electronic review will flag the need for a manual review. If an actual inspector can’t sort it out, they reach out to the customs broker who works out the glitch. It could mean requesting a new version of a label from Europe, or a translation of a certificate that was uploaded in French, or for a regulatory official to confirm that a cheese on the permitted list is actually on the permitted list. While it’s being sorted out, the entire shipment is warehoused, not just the problem cheese.

Ensuring that the supply chain continues its forward momentum and is not slowed down—with economic repercussions—runs into tension with border security. That tension has consequences for perishable food because, when those shipments are held for paperwork, they’re continuing to ripen. Their movement in space is delayed but their movement in time continues.

I know the purpose of all this government oversight is to make sure the cheese we import is safe, that it’s what it says it is and that the government can collect the appropriate duty. As you’ve investigated this system, have you seen obvious ways it could be streamlined?

This is one area where people are not calling for no regulation. People want a safe food supply and importers are nervous about being held responsible for that. In some ways they’d appreciate more government guidance in how to do this properly. It’s not all about difficult bureaucracy. Some delays, like ocean storms, are out of people’s hands.

Part of the issue is that regulatory demands keep changing. And part of that is politics. Tariffs, of course, are politics. The market is not free of politics even though we’ve been led to expect that it should be. What would help is for FDA inspectors to approach their job as one of mutual discovery with producers and distributors. Doing what’s best to ensure safety rather than checking things off a list. And many inspectors do.

I seem to remember less oversight in the past. Did 9/11 change everything?

I’ve heard people say it was the “Wild West” in the 1990s, with a lot of direct importing and people bringing in very small shipments. The 2002 Bioterrorism Act moved USDA inspection into Homeland Security and added a new level of bureaucracy. Then the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act added a whole new level. These two acts, which are all about ensuring the safety of the body politic and the food supply, have really complicated what it takes to bring food into the U.S.

The job of purchaser for an import company is more than just placing an order. Would you elaborate on what a good purchaser does?

Purchasing entails anticipating supply and demand weeks in advance—what cheeses will be available and what consumers will want. There’s often a seasonality to that. Then there are all the contingencies. You remember the controversies over the years with Mimolette and ashed cheeses. Every so often a product gets singled out for extra scrutiny or is suddenly inspected in way it hadn’t been before. Then purchasers have to get creative and find similar cheese from a lesser-known region. They have to respond to the market and to the regulatory climate.

How do import hiccups play out at the store level?

Stores have to manage gaps in imported products that unexpectedly might not be available. A lot of shops manage by having a robust domestic program. On the flip side, if there have been import delays, a store could receive multiple orders at once and there’s oversupply. Sometimes cheese arrives after more time in a shipping container than was anticipated. Stores that have an affinage program can often rescue these cheeses, but it takes expertise.

You’re a robiola lover and you say you’re disappointed on occasion. Any advice for other shoppers about purchasing highly perishable imported cheese?

It’s always good to sample before you buy. And don’t write off a cheese after one unpleasant experience. It’s probably going to be different the next time.