Cheese Politics

I am new in the cheese world. I started this blog as a way for me to remember all the great cheese I was tasting and selling. I am not a politically cheesy person and have no desires to insult anyone by questioning their integrity or their politics. I thought long and hard about how I was going to do this post. Did I want to straddle a politically correct line? Should I write with a neutral voice just documenting what I heard and saw? At the end I thought "screw it". I'm just going to write how I feel, like always.

On Tuesday I went to Wisconsin to attend a discussion at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute. The topic was raw milk cheese. I had an opportunity to attend and meet some wonderful people. One of those friendly Wisonsinites was Jeanne from Cheese Underground. She has done a post about her experience there, so some of our information will be similar.

Let's pause and talk a bit about my feelings on raw milk cheese. I love raw milk cheese. I prefer it in fact. I will spend premium money on it, and do my best to promote it as a retailer. Why? It tastes better. It's all about the terroir. Raw milk cheese promotes the land. You can taste it. It tastes floral, loamy, grassy, herbaceous and chalky. You taste wild onions, clover, thistle and earth. Pasteurizing cheese kills these flavors. You still get good flavor, but not like the raw deal.

Raw milk cheese is an expression of the land. Of the animals and ultimately of the cheesemaker. The raw cheese reflects how they treat their animals. Does it taste like pasture or hay? Does it taste like those goats live in a rocky area, or in a green meadow? All cheese tells a story. Raw milk cheese brings along slides. There is room for pasteurized cheese both in my heart and on my plate, but whenever possible I like to go raw. Okay, back to Tuesday.

The group consisted of cheesemakers, mongers, marketers, scientists, writers, and me. One of the big issues discussed was "what is raw milk cheese?" The definition of pasteurized cheese is milk that has reached a temperature of 161 for at least 15 seconds. The Raw Cheesemakers' Association defines raw milk cheese as:

Cheese produced from milk that, prior to setting the curd, has not been heated above the temperature of the milk (104°F, 40°C) at the time of milking and that the cheese produced from that milk shall be aged for 60 days or longer at a temperature of not less than 35°F (2°C) in accordance with US FDA regulations.

The problem is that there is a lot of temperature difference between 104 and 161. Not a lot of regulation in that temperature zone either. We were given a handout where the Wisconsin DATCP polled the Wisconsin cheesemakers who claim to make raw milk cheese and asked them questions about what temperature they brought the milk to, how long it was aged, and if they're using a single or multiple milk source.

The first thing that shocked me about this was that only 20 producers in Wisconsin are making raw milk cheese. Only 20! Wisconsin is known for it's cheese. It's the dairyland for goodness sake and out of the hundreds of cheesemakers out there (perhaps even thousands) they only have 20 who make raw milk cheese? I was shocked! Why so few? One person said that it was the American stomach that has done this. Our need for "clean food" has made our immune systems and tummies weak and more susceptible to upset. Producers are making products that the public can eat.

Of the 20 cheesemakers listed (they were all listed anonymously) their cheesemaking practices ranged from never heating the milk higher than the temperature it is at milking, to bringing it to 158-160 for 16 seconds. If pasteurized milk is 161 for 15 seconds, is 160 for 16 seconds really raw? Some people said yes. The raw milk purists said abso-frickin-lutely NO!

This is where the big problem is. Technically speaking the cheesemaker who doesn't get his milk any higher than it is when collected and the cheesemaker who heats it to within one degree of pasteurization can both call their product raw milk cheese. Legally it's ok to do this. The question then surfaces, if it is legal, is it also ethical to do so? I don't know that it is.

Should there be a third classification of milk? Raw, lightly heated and pasteurized? There was concern that a label of "gently heated" or something similar might be misinterpreted by the consumer, and the cheese wouldn't sell. At the same time someone mentioned that when he was in Texas, having the raw milk cheese label on your cheese meant a 30% increase in sales. So now the question is the person who heats to 160 does he really believe that he makes raw milk cheese, or does he want to sell 30% more product?

A very loaded issue. Each answer is really just brings about another question. Nothing can or was expected to be solved during a one day discussion. It did get a dialogue started, and I know that I am going to be making inquires at work as to how cheesemakers make some of the specific raw milk cheeses that we carry.

One of the lighter parts of the day was the cheese. People brought in all sort of cheese. Cheddars, stinkies, Swiss, French and one homemade. Bill, the cheese buyer from Fromagination brought in a cheese that he makes in his own kitchen. In my recollection, it was the only goat representative on the table. It was delicious. The most ironic thing was that there was a boxed lunch available with a choice of sandwich. Here, in the land of dairy, cheese mecca, the holey land I love a pun the cheese on the sandwiches was orange, bland, and almost heartbreaking considering the company.

More on my the second part of my day trip to Wisconsin later.