Inc. On 13 January 2021, Lino A. Saputo, the chair and CEO of Saputo Inc., announced the rebranding of the cheese under the name "Cheer", following years of controversy over its name. Naming controversy The former product name, which it shared with a racial slur, was defended by previous manufacturers Kraft Foods and Dairy Farmers despite decades-long campaigns to change it, including through challenges to the Australian Human Rights Commission in 1999 and Advertising Standards Bureau in 2001 by blaktivist Stephen Hagan. In the public debate raised by the campaign to change it, some of those who objected to the change of name claimed that the term was not used as a derogatory term in Australia, rather being an American racist term. However, Hagan and QNews reporter Destiny Rogers have said that the research in their e-book, COON: More Holes than Swiss Cheese, shows the term was used in Australia as a derogatory term for Indigenous Australians as well as other people of colour, and was especially common between the 1870s and 1939 before fading from the language during World War II and coming back into use in the 1970s. Hagan again challenged the name in 2008, and said that Dairy Farmers had told him that it was named after Edward Coon, "who revolutionised the speeding process of making cheese". According to Hagan, this story had only first been mentioned by the brand owners in the 1980s. In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Australia, on 24 July 2020 Saputo Inc. announced the name would be changed. On 13 January 2021, Lino A. Saputo, the chair and CEO of Saputo Inc., announced the new name as "Cheer" cheese. He said, "Treating people with respect and without discrimination is one of our basic principles". A number of other Australian companies also rebranded some of their products which have names with racist connotations in 2020, and others face pressure to do so. , Hagan is claiming legal damages of for what he calls "21 years of corporations undermining his claims that the cheese brand was not named after...William Edward Coon". Coon's process In 1926, American entrepreneur and cheesemaker Edward William Coon of Philadelphia patented a method for fast maturation of cheese via high temperature and humidity, His method explicitly excluded pasteurisation, which kills all bacteria and therefore allows cheese to last for much longer when stored. Coon once