For the Love of Cheese: Fidel Castro Makes Rare Appearance at Food Summit

For the first time in several months, Cuba’s former president Fidel Castro made a public appearance, attending a meeting with cheese experts.

Apparently alert and sharp, the 88-year-old revolutionary was seated at a panel organized by the Food Industry Ministry's Research Institute in the Havana suburb of Guatao.

“The meeting lasted for more than four hours and was attended by 19 cheese masters,” the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma, reported on Saturday.

Castro, who according to his biographers has been passionate about cheese-making since the 1960s, was interested in the quality and production levels of cheese in his country, media reports.