ISO: Illegal Cheese

Looking for raw milk cheese aged <60 days: ideally, illegal camembert or epoisses. Plz don’t post info; contact direct david@dchammond.com.

Does it have to be illegal, or is that just a bonus?

Um, if it's raw milk and aged less than 60 days, I believe it is illegal by definition....

At the St. Paul Farmer's Market, there's a woman rather famous for selling "fish food".

Vital Information wrote:At the St. Paul Farmer's Market, there's a woman rather famous for selling "fish food".

Ha, yes, you can sell the raw milk cheese to people if they intend to feed it to their goldfish. Or cats, I suppose.

Diannie wrote:Um, if it's raw milk and aged less than 60 days, I believe it is illegal by definition....

Could be legal somewhere outside of Illinois.

Llama wrote:

Diannie wrote:Um, if it's raw milk and aged less than 60 days, I believe it is illegal by definition....

Could be legal somewhere outside of Illinois.

Like France.

David Hammond wrote:

Llama wrote:

Diannie wrote:Um, if it's raw milk and aged less than 60 days, I believe it is illegal by definition....

Could be legal somewhere outside of Illinois.

Like France.

Or Canada. I recall gleam commenting he can buy these cheeses in a Canadian Costco.

Regards,

Yeah, a couple years ago. Last winter I didn't see any <60 day raw cheeses, all of the camemberts were pasteurized.

Hopefully things are different this year.

Isn't there a loophole that says if you own the cow you can use the raw milk? I'm sure if someone were to give you the cheese instead of sell it to you, it would be semi-legal.

David Hammond wrote:

Vital Information wrote:At the St. Paul Farmer's Market, there's a woman rather famous for selling "fish food".

Ha, yes, you can sell the raw milk cheese to people if they intend to feed it to their goldfish. Or cats, I suppose.

I am told by good and reliable sources that all the people that buy the fish bait from Lovetree Farmstead only feed it to their fish.

good luck!!!

informing the general populace:

the FDA mandates the pasteurization of cheeses in America

Raw milk cheeses must be aged at least 60 days(often much longer)...I sell a raw milk cheddar that's 180 days

supposedly, this FDA b.s. is so that the good bacteria has enough time to subsume the bad bacteria

of course, b.s. notwithstanding, there's been plenty of salmonella outbreaks linked to Oaxacan bathtub cheese in the past few years

Llama wrote:Isn't there a loophole that says if you own the cow you can use the raw milk? I'm sure if someone were to give you the cheese instead of sell it to you, it would be semi-legal.

In the U.S., it is not allowed to sell raw milk cheese that has been aged less than 60 days. However, you can buy it and eat it without fear of arrest.

In talking with Erik Larson (Marion Street Cheese Market) today, he mentioned that "processing" raw milk cheese aged less than 60 days is also illegal...unless for home use.

Gifting...wow, that is a gray area.

Christopher Gordon wrote:
The FDA mandates the pasteurization of cheeses in America

Raw milk cheeses must be aged at least 60 days(often much longer)...I sell a raw milk cheddar that's 180 days

To clarify: FDA requires pasteurization of milk for cheese that will be aged less than 60 days; if it's aged longer than 60 days, it can be still be considered "raw" if it hasn't been pasteurized.

Some cheddars are aged for years.

Diannie wrote:Um, if it's raw milk and aged less than 60 days, I believe it is illegal by definition....

If you sell it, yes, but what if you give it away?

David Hammond wrote:To clarify: FDA requires pasteurization of milk for cheese that will be aged less than 60 days; if it's aged longer than 60 days, it can be still be considered "raw" if it hasn't been pasteurized.

Some cheddars are aged for years.

Purely from a cheese quality / flavor / variety perspective (as opposed to the role of government in a free society), is this a significant restriction? What are we missing by not allowing raw milk cheeses aged less than 60 days?

Jed wrote:

David Hammond wrote:To clarify: FDA requires pasteurization of milk for cheese that will be aged less than 60 days; if it's aged longer than 60 days, it can be still be considered "raw" if it hasn't been pasteurized.

Some cheddars are aged for years.

Purely from a cheese quaility / flavor / variety perspective (as opposed to the role of government in a free society), is this a significant restriction? What are we missing by not allowing raw milk cheeses aged less than 60 days?

One opinion:

In one study, researchers at France’s Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique made the same cheeses from both raw and pasteurized milk. The raw-milk versions developed flavor sooner and the flavor was richer and more complex. The researchers’ conclusion: Pasteurization alters the biochemistry and microbiology of ripening and thus the texture and flavor of the cheese. All things being equal, raw milk will produce a more complex cheese than pasteurized milk. Nevertheless, most cheesemakers would agree that fresh, high-quality pasteurized milk is better than low-quality raw milk any day.

Source: http://www.specialtyfood.com/do/news/Vi ... le?id=1841

A well-aged, raw-milk brie, etc. is thixotropic...that baby will just ooooozzzzze out from the cut edge with glacial slowness. Doesn't happen with your pasteurized brie, etc.

There really is a marked difference between the two cheeses over aging time, with all the positives going to the raw-milk version.

C2 & Gleam: raw-milk young cheeses are available in Québec.

Geo

Yes, I didn't mean that *all* cheese must be pasteurized.

The raw milk cheddar I sell is a pleasant-enough cheese...it certainly doesn't compare to the bandaged Isle of Mull I once had from the Clybourne Whole Foods or the wrapped domestic artisanal raw milk cheddar (another 180 day, iirc) I last had from Marcy St. Market. And, our raw milk cheddar doesn't sell terribly well, either(even though it's a bit of a steal)...we carry several cheddars and most often (beyond even grades of sharpness) people go for the yellow(the raw milk cheddar isn't dyed). The stories I could relate when asked the invariable question, "what's the difference between yellow and white cheddar..." ...and the concommitant ignorant disavowals that anything dyed (albeit with a natural product, annatto) must somehow be "artificial." Or, conversely, that all cheddar implicitly is yellow. Don't get me started on the quandry of white and yellow American "cheese."

reminds me of my mother in law's (bless her heart) cheese trays. They always feature white cheese, yellow cheese, and white and yellow cheese.

Heh-heh, in addition to the usual Irish cheddar, my Costco in Montréal sells 1-yr, 2-yr, 3-yr, and 5-yr-old raw milk Canadian cheddar. You can not beLIEVE how piquant that 5-yr-old cheese is!

Geo
PS. CG, they're all of them white...

Geo,

ahhh...the most I can get my hands on is a Grafton 2-yr (also white)

dye me green like roquefort

Christopher, I tell a lie! I just went to my cheese drawer to grab my 5-yr cheddar and discovered this:





I'd clean forgotten. Hope this doesn't make you any more green....


Geo

cheese bastard!

I plan to do a side-by-side tasting of cheeses from pasteurized/non-pasteurized milk, but I realized tonight, in conversation with a local cheesemonger, that I'd have to use cheese made from milk from the same place/herd/season to reduce the variables enough to have a clean comparison. It's so obvious, but I didn't take that into account until now.

David Hammond wrote:I plan to do a side-by-side tasting of cheeses from pasteurized/non-pasteurized milk, but I realized tonight, in conversation with a local cheesemonger, that I'd have to use cheese made from milk from the same place/herd/season to reduce the variables enough to have a clean comparison. It's so obvious, but I didn't take that into account until now.

Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.

To get a good listing of raw milk cheeses from around here, look at the weekly offerings at L'Etoile in Madison. The Holland Farms gouda is near the top of my favorite cheeses these days FWIW and it's readily available in the Chicago area.

Jed wrote:What are we missing by not allowing raw milk cheeses aged less than 60 days?

Listeriosis, typhoid, tuberculosis, diphtheria and brucellosis.

David Hammond wrote:I plan to do a side-by-side tasting of cheeses from pasteurized/non-pasteurized milk

For a guy who worries about the health risks of going shoeless indoors, fingerlickers, touching restroom doors and party guests who eat over buffet tables, this seems awfully brave of you, Hammond!

I'm not afraid of any of those, but I would be leery of unaged, raw milk cheese unless I had personally met the cheesemaker, the farmer and the cow.

New York Times: Tuberculosis Cases Prompt Warning on Raw-Milk Cheese, March 16, 2005

I was talking to a cheesemonger last night, and he made the excellent point that what I'd need to do for a valid side-by-side tasting is to get a split batch from one cheesemaker. If the goal is comparison of raw milk vs. pasteurzied milk cheese, then it's necessary to reduce other variables like source of milk, cheesemaking techniques, etc.

This is going to be harder than I thought...but I'm working on it.

LAZ-- I note that the illnesses reported in the NYT article are suspected to have been caused by a young, raw-milk cheese from Mexico. Enough said.

I've lived, worked, vacationed, whatever'd, in France on-and-off since 1970. Since the very first time, in 1970, that I tried a raw-milk camembert, I've lusted for that and all other kinds of young similar cheeses. Needless to say, that lust has been (and continues to be) satisfied! Now I'm not going to commit the fallacy of converse accident and say, "So, since I never got sick eating them, such cheeses are safe." But what I *will* say is that I've continually checked it out in the national stats, I keep an eye on the newspapers, I listen to the radio, and in the 39 years I've spent gorging myself on such cheeses, I've seen no evidence in France that I was more likely to get ill from the cheeses than I was to find myself, say, in a car accident, or falling off my bike, or careening down the stairs. Life has risks. Some risks are soooo outweighed by their positive consequences that one is most certainly justified in taking the risk. Eating French raw-milk camembert is precisely such a case.

Geo
PS. Bye-the-bye, I would be remiss not to note that pristine and/or fastidious American intestinal systems might require a breaking-in period upon first encountering French raw-milk cheeses. But an unintended consequence then just might be a much more robust, not to mention *healthy*, post-American intestinal system.

For a guy who worries about the health risks of going shoeless indoors, fingerlickers, touching restroom doors and party guests who eat over buffet tables, this seems awfully brave of you, Hammond!

The same thought occurred to me!