Wisconsin takes their cheese pretty serious–what other state do you know where they proudly wear hunks of foam imitation coagulated milk protein?

So it shouldn’t really come as a huge surprise that Wisconsinites try to come up with as many uses for their most useful export outside of Brett Favre.

This particular use, though, is a bit surprising–one county in Wisconsin is actually using a combination of cheese brine with salt to clear their highways of snow and ice.

“It actually worked better for us at lower temperatures than regular salt brine. We believe because the organics in the product help it not freeze at lower temperatures,” Moe Norby, the Polk County Highway Department technical support manager said, in a comment that makes me wonder how closely they’ve actually looked at the science of this.

The cheese brine means less salt & chemicals for the county, which saves them money–and saves the dairy money on disposal as well.  Other counties and cities, including Milwaukee, have started using (or testing) the process as well.

Now, if they would just start chopping up those stupid foam cheeseheads to spread instead of sand on gravel roads…