Imported Cheeses and pasturization

[Saucy Girl]

Good afternoon Steve,

I am a big fan of yours - I have the Cheese Primer and reference it often. I love cheese, but I am currently struggling - I am 5 months pregnant, and the recommendation is to only consume cheese that is derived from pasturized milk.

I am under the impression that most imported cheeses are derived from non-pasturized milk - am I correct in that assumption?

BTW, I live in Boston and frequent Formaggio Kitchen - have you ever visited the shop?

Thanks for the opportunity to pick your brain!

Sharon

[master cheesemonger/grocer]

Ihsan Gurdal (he and his wife own FK) is a trusted friend and he is highly knowledgable. Neither he nor I are qualified to give you any advice. But if we didn't care about that we would tell you you're 180 degrees off. Of food-borne illnesses, a tiny fraction are related to dairy foods. Of those tainted dairy foods a tiny fraction of THAT tiny fraction are caused by cheese. Of THAT tiny number I'm telling you 99.9% of those substantiated tainted cheeses were made from pasteurized milk. So why do doctors and pediatricians and OB/GYNs advise their patients to avoid soft cheeses and all raw milk cheeses? Because they are parroting flawed data from well-disseminated medical reports, reports that are scientifically skewed to measure bacterial parts per billion rather than realistic parts per million, reports that we have successfully challenged via microbiological REAL data, etc. ad nauseum. You are as likely to lose your baby from eating artisanal cheeses as you are to get hit by space garbage. But I am not qualified to say a word. Listeria (the main culprit; e coli is not) thrives at low temperatures (factory refrigeration, supermarket walk-in refrigerators) and has proven to be a post-pasteurization phenomenon. Pasteurization results in "tabula rasa" (clean slate) milk wherein there is no natural order between good bacteria (the overwhelming majority of bacteria in raw milk are "good" bacteria) and bad bacteria. The Listeria have no competition; they run rampant. I'd be wary of Jarlsberg.

[Saucy Girl]

Thanks so much for your reply Steve - I truly appreciate your raw honesty.

PS - my son's name is also Max (he's 2 yrs old), and he loves to eat Parmigiano Reggiano, right off the block - like mother, like son.

Thanks again!