RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Imagine breaking into Fort Knox and, instead of gold, finding giant wheels of Parmesan cheese. That's the sort of value a dairy cooperative in Italy gave its gourmet cheese wheels when they used the cheese to back 6 million euros worth of bonds. The co-op hatched the plan after finding it hard to come by a bank loan to help it expand to the U.S. Investors expect a 5 percent return on the Parmesan bonds, the real white gold. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.