Cheese Illegal In the United States

Do you like going to your local grocery store and sampling delectable cheeses in a special section?  Grocers like Whole Foods ($WFM) have huge floor space dedicated to cheese.  The FDA is going to put artisan cheese makers out of business.  One reason why is the Obama Administration changed the focus from “contain” to “prevent” outbreaks.  It’s good policy to prevent outbreaks if you can but the way it’s enforced has severe economic consequences.  Here is how the FDA regulators say it.

“Microbial pathogens can be controlled if food facilities engage in good manufacturing practice. Proper cleaning and sanitation of equipment and facilities are absolutely necessary to ensure that pathogens do not find niches to reside and proliferate. Adequate cleaning and sanitation procedures are particularly important in facilities where persistent strains of pathogenic microorganisms like Listeria monocytogenes could be found. The use of wooden shelves, rough or otherwise, for cheese ripening does not conform to cGMP requirements, which require that “all plant equipment and utensils shall be so designed and of such material and workmanship as to be adequately cleanable, and shall be properly maintained.” 21 CFR 110.40(a). Wooden shelves or boards cannot be adequately cleaned and sanitized. The porous structure of wood enables it to absorb and retain bacteria, therefore bacteria generally colonize not only the surface but also the inside layers of wood. The shelves or boards used for aging make direct contact with finished products; hence they could be a potential source of pathogenic microorganisms in the finished products.”

Of course, most of the great cheese in the world is aged on wooden boards.  Parmigiano Reggiano, the fabulous cheese from Italy, aged on wooden boards. That stuff is contraband now.

We haven’t had a massive outbreak of any pathogen that needed to be contained, or could have been prevented yet.

Elected officials from both parties whine all the time about the lack of job creation in the last seven years.  One of the places that the United States could really innovate, be entrepreneurial, and disrupt and industry is artisan food. We have some of the best land in the world, and a lot of it.  Why not allow independent Americans to use it to create something cool?  America could have a much more vibrant cheese culture than France if we’d let it happen.  Look what is happening to microbeer.  Even the German brewers come here to taste innovative flavors.

Artisan cheese tastes a lot better than factory farmed wooden cheese.  Cheese Underground, a blog dedicated to US artisan cheese makers writes,

Many of the most awarded and well-respected American artisan cheeses are currently aged on wooden boards. American Cheese Society triple Best in Show winner Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Uplands Cheese in Wisconsin is cured on wooden boards. Likewise for award-winners Cabot Clothbound in Vermont, current U.S. Champion cheese Marieke Feonegreek, and 2013 Best in Show Runner-Up Bleu Mont Bandaged Cheddar.

Wisconsin cheesemaker Chris Roelli says the FDA’s “clarified” stance on using wooden boards is a “potentially devastating development” for American cheesemakers. He and his family have spent the past eight years re-building Roelli Cheese into a next-generation American artisanal cheese factory. Just last year, he built what most would consider to be a state-of-the-art aging facility into the hillside behind his cheese plant. And Roelli, like hundreds of American artisanal cheesemaekrs, has developed his cheese recipes specifically to be aged on wooden boards

These are entrepreneurs that the government is deliberately putting out of business.  What we ought to be doing is taking away regulation.  We ought to be allowing raw milk production and consumption.  We ought to take away rules prohibiting interstate commerce in organic food.  We ought to be unbundling the farm industry in the US.