Issue 1: October 2026

This is the first issue of Cheddar Check. It is written for a pizzeria, sandwich shop or caterer facing a supplier's price claim on cheddar. It reports market evidence. It does not estimate any supplier's cost and draws no conclusion about any contract.

The read

Two block cheddar prices are in this issue, and in October they told different stories.

The mandatory-reported price, what cheese manufacturers received for 40-pound blocks sold in the week, was $1.4309 a pound for the week ending October 10, against $1.7183 in the comparable week of 2025, a fall of 16.7%. Its four-week average, $1.4824, is 14.9% lower than a year earlier. It fell week by week across those four weeks, from $1.5435 in the week ending September 19 to $1.4974, $1.4579 and $1.4309. The weighted average rests on 10,443,477 pounds sold in the latest week, 5.1% fewer than a year earlier.

The CME cash market for cheese, which USDA reprints, rose in both October weeks this record holds. Its weekly average for 40-pound blocks went from $1.294 a pound in the week to October 2 to $1.348 and then to $1.5395 in the week of October 12 to 16, and blocks closed that Friday at $1.6825. The CME barrel weekly average rose to $1.5095 from $1.4525, a level it had held for the three weeks before. This record began collecting the CME series in September and holds five weeks of it, so it cannot say where the CME market stood a year ago.

The two prices do not cover the same week. The mandatory report for the week ending October 17 had not published when this issue's data was collected, so the week of the spot market's sharpest rise, October 12 to 16, is not yet in it, and this record does not forecast what that report will show. In the mandatory week ending October 10, which overlaps the CME week of October 5 to 9, the CME block weekly average rose from $1.294 to $1.348 while the mandatory price fell from $1.4579 to $1.4309. In that latest pair of weeks the record can match, the mandatory block price was $0.0829 a pound above the CME block weekly average. That is the arithmetic difference between two measures of the block market, not a margin.

The cheese indexes for September point down on the year. The producer price index for natural cheese is 4.8% below September 2025, and the consumer price index for cheese and related products is 3.0% below. The average retail price of natural cheddar was $6.133 a pound, 1.4% higher, and of American processed cheese $4.737 a pound, 3.8% lower.

What these figures establish is narrow. Against a year earlier, the wholesale block price, the cheese producer index and the cheese consumer index are lower, so they do not support a general claim that cheddar prices rose on the year. The retail average price of natural cheddar, 1.4% higher, is the exception, and it is a price shoppers paid, not a wholesale one. Within October, the CME block weekly average rose in both weeks this record holds, and a claim that "the block market went up" this month can point to that; the mandatory block price fell over the same weeks. The figures do not establish what happened to any particular supplier's costs.

The numbers

Two-year comparisons, where the record allows them, against September 2024: natural cheese PPI −10.4%; cheese CPI −1.9%; natural cheddar at retail +7.0% and American processed −4.3%; food away from home +7.3%. The weekly series carry none in this issue.

The explanation

Five kinds of measure appear above and they answer different questions. The mandatory-reported block price is a weighted average of what reporting manufacturers received in a week. The CME figures are cash-market quotes, as USDA reprints them. The producer price index measures the selling prices received by domestic producers of natural cheese and excludes imports. The two consumer price indexes measure the change in prices urban consumers pay: one for cheese and related products at retail, one for meals and snacks bought away from home, which is not a restaurant's cost. The two average prices are retail prices per pound for two items. None of them is a supplier's cost, and a movement in one does not fix a movement in another.

The mandatory-reported price is narrower than the word "cheddar". The National Dairy Products Sales Report of October 15, 2026 defines it as cheddar cheese in 40-pound blocks, colored between 6 and 8 on the National Cheese Institute color chart, meeting Wisconsin State Brand, USDA Grade A, or better standards, and says 17 entities report it. The price is a weighted average in dollars per pound for the week ending Saturday. The report states no age, moisture content or pricing point; it refers its definitions to the program regulations (7 CFR 1170) and to the questionnaire manufacturers complete, and this record retains neither. It says it is subject to revision for the previous four weeks; in the October 15 report the week ending September 26 is marked revised, and its figure differs from the one first published for that week. It is not a price for cut, shredded or sliced cheese, for barrels, or for any other variety. A pizzeria buys more mozzarella than cheddar, and nothing here is a mozzarella price.

The CME figures are the CME Group cash market for cheese as USDA's Dairy Market News reprints it, in dollars per pound in carlot quantities. The weekly average is, in the report's words, "the simple average of the daily close prices for the calendar week," Monday to Friday, computed by Dairy Market News: an average of closing prices, not weighted by the number or size of trades. The reprint states no grade, color, age, moisture content or delivery point, and labels the barrel row only "Barrels", with no barrel weight. The two need not move together: in October the cash quote rose while the mandatory price, which averages a week's sales across reporting manufacturers, fell.

The mandatory report and the CME reprint do not share a week. The mandatory report's week ends Saturday and the CME reprint's ends Friday, so the derived difference pairs the mandatory week ending October 10 with the CME week ending October 9, the nearest week within four days. In that pair the mandatory price, $1.4309, was above the CME weekly average, $1.348. The following CME week, ending October 16, has no mandatory week to pair with in this issue.

USDA's Food Price Outlook, in its update of September 25, 2026, puts dairy product consumer prices 0.3% lower from August 2025 to August 2026, food away from home 3.4% higher and all food 2.7% higher. It gives forecast intervals for 2027 of −5.0% to 8.4% for dairy products, 0.2% to 5.1% for food away from home, and −2.7% to 7.0% for all food. The dairy interval runs from a fall to a rise.

The uncertainty

This is the first issue of this title. It compares each series with the same period a year earlier and, where the record holds it, two years earlier. Month-to-month movement is not in this issue's computed set, except where the text quotes consecutive weekly values from it.

The CME series carries no year-over-year comparison. Each Dairy Market News report carries one week, so this record holds only the weeks it has collected since September 2026, five at this issue's run, and a year-over-year figure for it will not exist until the record covers a year, around September 2027. The four-week CME averages are simple averages of the four weekly averages, each week counting equally.

The Dairy Market News report for the week of October 12 to 16 prints the CME weekly average twice, and the two do not agree. Its first page gives $1.5395 for blocks and $1.5095 for barrels. The weekly average column of its second-page table prints different figures for the same week. This record reads the first page, which equals the simple average of the five daily closes printed in the second-page table, as the report's own definition requires.

The 500-pound barrel series in the mandatory report last printed a price for the week ending May 31, 2025, $1.9495 a pound, in the report of June 4, 2025; the next report carried that week and the three before it as empty, and every week since is empty, and the current report's list of products it collects does not include barrels. It is held as history and is not a current price. It is also a different measure from the CME "Barrels" quote above, which is current. The retained file does not say whether the barrel price column this record read was adjusted to a moisture basis.

The latest mandatory week, ending October 10, is as first published, and the next four reports may revise it. A year-over-year comparison for the weekly series is against the week ending nearest 52 weeks earlier, within four days; here the week ending October 10, 2026 is compared with the week ending October 11, 2025.

The October 15 report describes its participants as 63 reporting entities "selling one million pounds or more of dairy products as defined by statute", 17 of them reporting 40-pound blocks. Mandatory reporting is not every sale of cheddar in the country, and the pounds sold are not total cheddar production.

The September producer price index is preliminary, and BLS may revise it for up to four months after first publication.

The two retail average prices are U.S. city averages for natural cheddar and American processed cheese. They are what shoppers paid at retail, not a foodservice price and not a price for any particular pack or brand.

The USDA Food Price Outlook figures are year-over-year from August 2025 to August 2026, not September to September. The forecast intervals are for 2027 and cover dairy products as a category, not cheese.

The buyer's question

Ask the supplier three things before accepting a cheddar increase.

Which product and which market: the form and pack (block, barrel, shredded, sliced), and whether the price claim refers to the CME spot market or to mandatory-reported sales. They are different measures, and in October they moved in different directions: the mandatory block price fell week by week to October 10, and the CME block weekly average rose in each of the two weeks to October 16.

Which dates: the week the original quote priced from and the week the adjustment references. The CME block weekly average went from $1.348 to $1.5395 in one week; a quote priced from one of those weeks can sit some way from the other.

Which series: the published series or supplier invoice behind the stated increase. Every series above is free and public. Against a year earlier, the mandatory block price is 16.7% lower, the natural cheese producer index 4.8% lower and the cheese consumer index 3.0% lower; the retail average price of natural cheddar is 1.4% higher.

The record

Sources and retrieval. The issue's own run is 2026-10-18T145249Z, captured October 18, 2026. The CME series accumulates one week per weekly run, so this issue also rests on the Dairy Market News reports retained by five earlier runs, from 2026-09-23T152701Z to 2026-10-16T221734Z: the four weeks before the latest, and an earlier copy of the latest week's report. Every capture behind it, with its retrieval time and SHA-256, is listed in evidence.json.

• USDA AMS National Dairy Products Sales Report, report NDPSR-0756 of October 15, 2026, under mandatory reporting: 40-pound block cheddar weighted price and pounds sold, week ending Saturday, whole history since 2012 in one request, retained as the Datamart JSON and the printed PDF. The 500-pound barrel series from the same program, retained as JSON.
• USDA AMS Dairy Market News, weekly report for the week of October 12 to 16, 2026 (volume 93, report 42), and the reports for the four weeks before it: CME Group cash market for cheese, barrels and 40-pound blocks, weekly average and Friday close, as reprinted by USDA. CME data is proprietary at source; the USDA reprint is the public record of it.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, public API v2. PPI commodity index WPU023302 (natural cheese, except cottage cheese); CPI-U CUUR0000SEFJ02 (cheese and related products) and CUUR0000SEFV (food away from home); average prices APU0000710212 (natural cheddar) and APU0000710211 (American processed cheese). Not seasonally adjusted. Latest month September 2026.
• USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, CPI forecast table, update of September 25, 2026.

Method: every figure in this issue appears in numbers.json, regenerated from the data files by tools/issue.py. Capture files are hashed into an external timestamp chain anchored by RFC 3161 tokens from two timestamp authorities, which show they existed unchanged by the anchor date. An OpenTimestamps proof is stored for this edition's anchor; its Bitcoin attestation is collected by a later upgrade run. An external timestamp shows when a captured record existed. It does not show that a source's figure was correct or that a quoted price was available to every buyer.

Corrections: none. This issue is the first of this title.

Next issue: after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases October producer price indexes on November 13, 2026.