Comment Dye Supply (Score 4, Interesting) 88
About sixteen years ago, I toured the factory of a dairy coöperative in Vermont; they are fairly well-known in New England, and distribute there, but also have had some success further down the east coast of the US. They were talking about their flagship cheddar cheese, and how especially in the midwest, people came to expect cheese to be yellow in color. In New England, they do not add dyes, but when they ship their products elsewhere, they would use carrot juice to give it the more yellow/orange color.
I had wondered how that would affect the taste, but I also thought that it was nice that they did not use artificial dyes. I had not considered the supply chain issue, though; this was a smaller group of independent dairy farmers who came together to make products in order to share costs and to reach a wider market, but being smaller, they probably have an easier time getting things like the yellow-orange dye from carrots. But it also raises the interesting marketing question... there is no reason that cheese needs to be dyed in the first place. People in certain areas became used to it, and then expected it, because of lower-quality cheeses that had been produced there for ages. But to add dyes purposefully to make a food product appealing that otherwise would not be is another level - one wonders with the potential supply-chain issues how long some of those items will last and be popular.