If it’s made with the same process of cultivating cultures of the same microorganisms, then it is still cheese.

But it’s not cheese, so obviously you can’t enter it in a cheese contest.

Except you can and vegetarian and vegan substitutes are explicitly allowed by the competition in question.

See subcategories towards the bottom of this page: https://goodfoodfdn.org/awards/categories/cheese/

It sounds more like they just never thought a vegan cheese would come close to winning. And when that happened, they planned to make a co-winner, if a vegan cheese was crowned first place. https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/04/27/vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-climax/

Except the would be winner was disqualified, not for being vegan, but for using an ingredient, “kokum butter”, which has not been categorized by authorities as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) yet.

Kokum, for those wondering, is in the mangosteen family (Garcinia) and the fruit is often used as a souring agent in South Asian cooking. The fat from the seed, like cocoa butter, is used in cosmetics but is also edible and has culinary applications.

I get that “rules are rules” and an ingredient was used that wasn’t approved… But based on the activities like having a co-winner, leading up to the disqualification makes me think it’s not the fact that it’s vegan that’s a problem, it’s the threat and validation that a plant-based product could be great or better than its dairy equivalent.