Illegal dairy products

[Kent Wang]

There are several farmers at the markets in Austin that sell "milk shares". This is unpasteurized milk, which is illegal to sell. The farmers skirt the law by selling shares of the cow, which comes with the milk. This seems to have been going on for a while and is not highly secretive.

If this can be done, why not cheese shares of unaged, unpasteurized soft cheeses?

[Mikeb19]

Strait up, theres a reason they're illegal.

With cheese that's been ripened, the good bacteria develop, and kill off the bad bacteria, making it safe. This is why unpasteurized cheese is required by law to be aged for a certain time.

With soft unaged and unpasteurized cheese, theres not enough time for all the bad stuff to die off. Even in the last decade, theres been plenty of reported (and no doubt more unreported) deaths due to unpasteurized dairy products. It's simply not safe.

I know down in the US, drugs such as marijuana and cocaine are highly illegal. If you don't allow people to use those products, why should it be a problem that unaged unpasteurized cheese is outlawed? Both are dangerous, so it only makes sense that both are illegal, no?

[Stephanie Wallace]

I know down in the US, drugs such as marijuana and cocaine are highly illegal.  If you don't allow people to use those products, why should it be a problem that unaged unpasteurized cheese is outlawed?  Both are dangerous, so it only makes sense that both are illegal, no?

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This could spin into a terrifying discussion, but I'll happily refrain from sparking it today

-->Recent relevant reading on the subject from the Triangle Independent.

[AAQuesada]

Strait up, theres a reason they're illegal. 

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Are you drunk? are you seriously comparing raw milk to narcotics??? First of all lets get this straight.

RAW MILK IS NOT ILLEGAL IN THE USofA.

It IS illegal to sell accross state lines. Other than that it is a states rights issue.

Where it is legal to sell raw milk it has a very good safey track record. Though like ANY agricultural product there can and have been proplems.

No one is planning on banning the sale of raw spinach, even though it would be more safe. IMO raw milk safety is something that can be delt with through proper regulation and inspections of dairies

[AAQuesada]

I know down in the US, drugs such as marijuana and cocaine are highly illegal.  If you don't allow people to use those products, why should it be a problem that unaged unpasteurized cheese is outlawed?  Both are dangerous, so it only makes sense that both are illegal, no?

←

This could spin into a terrifying discussion, but I'll happily refrain from sparking it today

-->Recent relevant reading on the subject from the Triangle Independent.

←

Don't worry this one's on me

[Stephanie Wallace]

Thanks

[cdh]

Excellent story you've linked to there. More power to local raw milk producers! Get the nanny state out of our fridges!

[Fugu]

This thread reminds me of that BBC series, Chef. One episode, Chef Gareth Blackstock was in search of illegal, unpasteurized Stilton cheese.

"Gone off milk and bugs, living in perfect harmony"

[Kent Wang]

RAW MILK IS NOT ILLEGAL IN THE USofA.

It IS illegal to sell accross state lines. Other than that it is a states rights issue.

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According the aforementioned Independent article:

Raw milk is available at retail stores in eight states and legally sold at the farm gate in a couple dozen more. Until three years ago, North Carolina allowed contractual agreements through which consumers could purchase a share in a cow or goat, pay the farmer the agricultural equivalent of room and board—much in the way people pay stables to care for their horses—and then have a legal right to the animal's milk, or a fraction thereof. Cow shares were banned in 2004 with a line slipped into unrelated legislation without a hearing.

It is certainly illegal in Texas, or else the farmers wouldn't be selling milk shares.

Still, the bulk of what I've read about this has been on milk and not cheese. Why aren't there cheese shares? I rarely consume milk these days, so raw milk is not an important issue for me. But unaged, unpasteurized local cheese would be great to have.

[Torrilin]

Illegal and raw milk gets *complicated*. It's usually not flat out illegal to sell raw milk in a state. It's more the inspections and compliance rules are set up so that it's inconvenient enough that it might as well be illegal. This is not good for encouraging compliance with the law, since raw milk really is better for some purposes (like cheese!).

This is not a particularly good thing for adults in search of tasty cheese. On the other hand, it's a good thing for babies and children, since they're pretty vulnerable to a wide range of milk borne pathogens. On the gripping hand, the restrictions are a patchwork of laws (different in each state), and getting them changed to something saner is hard work.

Oh, and not every "cow share", "milk share" or "cheese share" is for raw milk products. It's not odd for a dairy farm to have pasturizing equipment. I'm in Wisconsin, and local CSA packages often offer cheese, butter, milk, and/or cream. Pasturized of course. I've had raw milk before, and while it's deliriously good, it's not flat out better (in my 5 year old's memory) than pasturized. My 5 year old self was of the firm opinion that it didn't matter if the milk was pasturized or not, what mattered is that it had been kept *cold* after. And my adult self knows that milk stored in a tinted container is just plain better than milk stored in clear glass. I don't like the way UV breakdown products taste in my milk.

[edsel]

More about raw milk in the New York Times Dining & Wine section. Including some quotes (and accompanying MP3's) from Nina Planck:

“We’re willing to spend more money the higher up the food chain we go,” she said. “We’re not alone, either. You cannot categorize the people who are drinking raw milk. They are people from the blue states and red states, farmers and yuppies and Birkenstock wearers.”

[Margo]

I found the Times article frustrating in the lack of real information--it seemed more of a "one side, the other side" report. Here's one example where I'd like more info:

"We drink raw milk because we trust the traditional food chain more than the industrial one," said Ms. Planck, who knows a number of farmers from her days as director of the New York City Greenmarkets and through her boyfriend, Rob Kaufelt, the owner of Murray's Cheese in Greenwich Village.

Now I get, and agree with, exactly what she's saying about knowing your supplier and the accountability of a short food chain. But my question is borne of true ignorance and I'd like to know: how can one know that a pail of raw milk isn't harboring listeria, or a similar pathogen? Is it a matter of healthy cows, sterile buckets, safe handling...?

[Dante]

This thread reminds me of that BBC series, Chef. One episode, Chef Gareth Blackstock was in search of illegal, unpasteurized Stilton cheese.

"Gone off milk and bugs, living in perfect harmony"

yes yes yes!!!

I've been questing for unpasteurized Stilton ever since I first saw that one...

Sincerely,

Dante

(who considers Gareth Blackstock one of his personal heroes)

[StevenC]

Here in California it's legal to sell unpasteurized milk, and I regularly buy it at my local Whole Foods, which sells both raw milk and raw cream. Granted, it's not cheap--$3.99 for a quart of raw milk, $11.99 for a pint of raw cream--but it tastes a lot better than the pasteurized stuff. It has a rounder, more complex flavor... I guess "milkier" would be the best way to describe it.

My next project is to make cream cheese from the raw cream... too bad it's so difficult to get proper bagels on the West Coast!

I don't know that I'd put raw milk into a baby's bottle, but for otherwise healthy adults I simply don't see the issue. I mean, when we get into our cars every morning or go on a ski vacation we don't agonize over the risk of getting killed. Put a glass of raw milk or a hunk of Camembert in front of us, though, and we start screaming bloody murder, even though proportionally far more people die in car accidents or in ski mishaps every year than from drinking raw milk or eating unaged, unpasteurized cheese.

Edited August 9, 2007 by StevenC (log)

[Dante]

Illegal and raw milk gets *complicated*. It's usually not flat out illegal to sell raw milk in a state. It's more the inspections and compliance rules are set up so that it's inconvenient enough that it might as well be illegal. This is not good for encouraging compliance with the law, since raw milk really is better for some purposes (like cheese!).

over here in New Hampshire, we can get raw milk cheeses with no problem, or at least I can find them plainly labeled at the local food co-op where I do all of my shopping.

This is not a particularly good thing for adults in search of tasty cheese. On the other hand, it's a good thing for babies and children, since they're pretty vulnerable to a wide range of milk borne pathogens. On the gripping hand, the restrictions are a patchwork of laws (different in each state), and getting them changed to something saner is hard work.

agreed. Vermont seems to have more than its share of over-regulation when it comes to food (last Summer, as an act of protest, a restaurant did a special pizza using chicken from down the road from them- http://www.ruralvermont.org/archives/002761.html ), but, because VT has a rep as a "dairy state", cheese seems to go largely unmolested.

Sincerely,

Dante

[Dante]

I don't know that I'd put raw milk into a baby's bottle, but for otherwise healthy adults I simply don't see the issue.

The Weston A Price Foundation (http://www.westonaprice.org/ ), which always has a booth at the annual Flavors of the Valley food show up in Vermont has much to say on the benefits of raw milk.

I mean, when we get into our cars every morning or go on a ski vacation we don't agonize over the risk of getting killed. Put a glass of raw milk or a hunk of Camembert in front of us, though, and we start screaming bloody murder, even though proportionally far more people die in car accidents or in ski mishaps every year than from drinking raw milk or eating unaged, unpasteurized cheese.

you've got a point there.

of course, cheese, being an safer target than, say, driving, is much easier to persecute.

Jeffrey Steingarten has a good (and highly entertaining) piece on raw milk cheeses in "It Must Have Been Something I Ate".

Sincerely,

Dante

[nibor]

I would want some assurance that somebody was paying strict attention to where the milk came from. I have a vivid memory of what gastrointestinal tuberculosis can do (to an otherwise healthy adult) from when I worked in a hospital...