FDA better not move my cheese!
To answer your question, cheese has been around for a very long time, probably in the neighborhood of 10,000 years.
It also used to routinely sicken and kill people by the hundreds or thousands. Here’s a link to some cases just since the 40s, and limited mostly to N. America.
We have gotten so used to our food supply being safe that we take it for granted, as if it were a fact of life rather than something created by improvements in sanitation, better understanding of food safety, and, yes, regulations.
Which is not to say that all existing or proposed regulations are necessary and appropriate. Only that many of them are.
In China food preparation and processing is largely unregulated, in real terms, and horror stories pop up regularly.