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The Ten Minute Food Activist: Join the Cheese of Choice Coalition to Choose Cheeses Made from Unpasteurized Milk!
By Jean Andreasen

One Sunday last month, in the midst of my morning constitutional, I happened to catch that weekend's MPR broadcast of The Splendid Table. Host Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sarah Baer-Sinnot of Oldways Preservation & Trust were discussing the possibility of the FDA banning the sale of cheese made from unpasteurized (raw) milk. I paused for a moment as I considered what life would be like without Parmigiano-Reggiano in my refrigerator—something I personally would want to avoid at all costs.

Not that there is anything wrong with pasteurization per se. Milk can vary in flavor depending on a number of factors. The breed of cattle, the type of food the animal has been eating—even the weather the day the animal was milked all play a role in the flavor of milk. Pasteurization, the process of heating milk to a specific temperature to kill microorganisms and enzymes, is used by many large scale cheese producers to standardize raw milk to create a uniform product. However, many cheese connoisseurs concur that pasteurization does not produce the fuller, richer flavors and textures characteristic of raw milk cheeses. Cheese made from unpasteurized milk is sold in the United States if it has been aged for longer than 60 days. However, the FDA is currently considering the prohibitation of raw milk cheese sales in this country by the end of this year.

As their conversation continued I realized how many of my favorite cheeses would be affected: Swiss Emmental, Gruyére, and Appenzell, Roquefort, Asiago, Comte, Grafton Village Vermont Cheddar (a staple in my backpack), Spanish Idiazabal, most imported and regional farmhouse cheeses, to name a few. It also struck me as a bit ironic that the FDA would consider such a ban when there have been little health risk associated with the consumption of raw milk cheeses through the centuries ó while maintaining a position that GMOs do not have to be labeled, though their health risk track record is nonexistent.

Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust and the American Cheese Society have joined to assemble an international coalition, "Cheese of Choice Coalition," to oppose governmental agencies that want to ban production and sale of cheese made from unpasteurized milk. If you are interested in supporting this organization, please contact the following to help to keep your freedom of choice in cheeses:

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