Under the U.S. marketing laws, “processed” has a specific meaning. The magazine Consumer Reports once ran a hilarious article on the various terms applied to cheese, each one a further step from real cheese.
The gist of the article was that “cheese” meant the completely unprocessed natural product (apart from the fermentation, of course), “pasteurized” cheese came next, then “processed” cheese, which was blended from various batches. The gamut runs all the way to “pasteurized processed cheese food spread,” which comes in a spray can.