Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cheese is a dairy product made by coagulating the milk protein casein, leaving a food composed of milk proteins and fat. Producers acidify milk and add rennet or bacterial enzymes to form solid curds, then separate the curds from the liquid whey and press them into finished cheese.
The origins of cheese predate recorded history, with no conclusive evidence of a single birthplace among Europe, Central Asia or the Middle East. The earliest proposed dates reach back to around 8000 BCE, and the earliest archaeological evidence comes from Kuyavia, Poland, around 5500 BCE.
The earliest preserved cheese ever discovered was found on mummies in the Xiaohe Cemetery in the Taklamakan Desert of Xinjiang, China, dating back as early as 1615 BCE.
The first factory for industrial cheese production opened in Switzerland in 1815, but large-scale success came in the United States. Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York, began making cheese assembly-line style in 1851 using milk from neighboring farms.
Over a thousand types of cheese exist worldwide. Estimates of recognized varieties range from around 500 by the International Dairy Federation to more than 1,000 by Sandine and Elliker, and Charles de Gaulle once referred to 246 kinds of French cheese.
Food safety agencies warn that soft raw-milk cheeses can cause serious infections including listeriosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis and tuberculosis. Since 1944, US law has required all raw-milk cheeses to be aged at least 60 days, and the Centers for Disease Control advises pregnant women to avoid soft-ripened and blue-veined cheeses.