Dairy scientist #2

Another of my favorite dairy scientists spoke at a different panel. At my first out-of the Bay Area ACS conference in 2001 Catherine Donnelly spoke about having taken on a study in relation to the FDA considering the banning all raw milk cheese (not just the ones aged less than 60 days as it’s the current law.). She described herself as going in like a typical food science person, looking to minimize health risk and assuming their was some kind of reason behind the proposed tightening of the laws.

What she found was very little evidence that aged raw milk cheese posed much of a health threat at all. She reviewed cases of food borne-illness over the past 30 years or so and very little evidence of aged raw milk cheese-related illness or death. She started questioning the basic concepts of raw milk cheese and safety held by the regulatory agencies of the US.

Thus she became a hero to the U.S, citizens who care about amazing traditonally-made cheeses. In a 2001 issue of "Discover Magazine" she was quoted in a paragraph that has become a hard-to-argue-against mantra of the pro-raw milk cheese folks
Ironically, the cheeses that have caused illnesses have often been made from pasteurized milk and then contaminated during processing. "Pasteurization may actually create a more dangerous situation, in that you knock out the competitive flora," Donnelly says. The good bugs that help keep the bad bugs in check in a raw-milk cheese are destroyed by pasteurization.

That post-production contamination in pasteurized cheese cause more illness than raw milk cheese is not debated (there is also not much raw milk cheese eaten, statistically speaking, in the US either). But this gets to the heart of the issue. Large scale factory production has unintended risks. To destroy traditional cheesemaking in the name of safety is an idea born of false comfort.

She gave a report on current issues relating to the legal status of raw milk cheese. Oddly, this lead to a discussion of "food irradiation."* The FDA has been trying to change the definition of "pasteurized" to include food irradiation for quite some time.. Seems like it's getting much closer. The law has not yet changed to allow food radiation to be called "pasteurized", but (and this is still murky) it will allow petitioners seek approval for this is they can to prove that "any safe process that is at least as protective as pasteurization and is reasonably certain to kill the most resistant pathogens likely to occur in the food."**

Now, any right thinking person realizes that this is a fucking disaster. Clearly this is an attempt by big money to sneak a process that consumers don't want into their food supply. The effect on standards will potentially be huge. I mean geez, if we're gonna irradiate it anyway, who cares how many cancerous sores are on that carcass that will be your next hamburger?** *

Donnelly announced that she (working with cheese friendly groups) intends to have the first petition in front of this new group when it forms. Not for irradiation of course, but for thermalized and raw milk cheese that she feels she can prove are just as safe as pasteurized ones.

Wow, that's something I feel really mixed about. I'm totally behind what she is doing for cheese but I can just see a committee like that using a decision that cheese lovers and slow food folks would support as a way to legitimize a committee that was really organized for something completely different.

Who knows, maybe this will be one of those odd twists of history where something done in the name of greed and centralization of the food supply actually ends up having unintended benefits for small production, traditional products. We can hope… right?



*"often called 'cold pasteurization'" my ass. Reading government documents really can make you mad.
**I could only find a draft and am not sure if that is the exact wording. But this quote is substantially similar if not identical.
***I am not a vegetarian. I do believe meat is made of carcass though.