BC E-coli case tied to raw milk cheese

From Randy Shore, at the Vancouver Sun:

“With one person dead and 10 ill, others who ate cheese from an artisan dairy in Salmon Arm are nervous.

While investigators try to pin down the cause of a fatal E. coli outbreak at the dairy, Iain Ilich is wondering whether he, his wife and 13-month-old daughter are going to fall ill.

Ilich purchased several cheeses at Gort’s Gouda Cheese Farm while travelling through the Interior about a month ago.

“I’ve got some smoked Gouda, peppercorn Gouda and Gouda with cumin seed in the fridge,” said Ilich, a communications specialist in Calgary. “I’ve eaten it, my dad has eaten it and I’m particularly concerned because my wife and my daughter have eaten it as well.”

Resurrecting raw milk Stilton in Britain

From Simone Gie on Slow Foods:

“1989 was a bleak year for Stilton. The illustrious English blue-veined cheese was accused as the culprit of a food poisoning scare that sickened several people whose Christmas tables it had graced. Fears that pathogens lurking in the raw-milk cheese were to blame triggered a knee-jerk decision that from then on, all Stilton would be made with pasteurized milk. The creamy blue was never proven to be cause of the outbreak, but it was too late. Production guidelines were rewritten, new equipment bought and methods changed. The centuries-old cheese as it has always been made ceased to exist.

Christmas, 15 years later: talented cheesemaker Joe Schneider and affineur and British cheese advocate Randolph Hodgson meet for a pint at London’s Borough Market one chilly evening. Hodgson propositions Schneider with an audacious plan: to bring back raw-milk Stilton from the grave.

Of dairy queens and human cheese

From Puff the Mutant Dragon blog:

Calvin and Hobbes comic strip via Puff the Mutant Dragon blog.

“A couple of years ago, an enterprising New York chef made headlines by serving cheese made from his wife’s breast milk. His stunt provoked a swift reaction from the New York Health Department, which didn’t seem to find this novelty menu item amusing. Despite his venture’s unsuccessful end, a London ice cream parlor tried to imitate him last year by selling a breast-milk-based product.

Do you find the idea of human cheese and ice cream bizarre? Disturbing? If so, it’s not very difficult to see why. What’s more difficult to explain is how we came to drink milk from other mammals in the first place.

The art of making raw milk cheese

From the Happy Homesteader:

Curds in the whey ... where is little Ms. Muffet? Photo via Happy Homesteader.

“Cheese making is most certainly an art, not a science.  There are many ways in which the cheese making process can go off track.  This is in part because the process is mostly open to the air, and also because there are many variables.  As a small-scale cheese producer, you can follow the same recipe twice and get different results.

I have been fortunate enough to experiment with the art of cheese making, which has been both a source of great joy and frustration.  I have produced cheeses that have been the toast of the table and garnered rave reviews.  I have also produced a cheese that much resembled a rubber disc.  It even bounced.

Cheese expert a fan of the raw milk kind

From Joe Bonwich, in St. Louis Today:

Cheese master Max McCalman. Photo via St. Louis Today.

“Renowned cheese expert Max McCalman will be in town this week to lead cheese tastings and sign books, but don’t be surprised if he slips in some evangelism for raw-milk cheeses.

“I feel very passionate about them, and I’ve studied them extensively,” McCalman says. “Raw-milk cheese has a great food-safety record. We can eat raw oysters and eat raw meat in this country if we want to, but not raw-milk cheese. There’s something wrong with that, especially since cheese hasn’t been implicated in as many food-poisoning issues as raw seafood, raw meat or even raw vegetables.”

Aussie gov’t decides to stick with local raw milk cheese prohibition, although imported raw milk cheeses are allowed

From Elaine Reeves on The Mercury.com.au

Nick Haddow of Bruny Island Cheese Company makes a hard raw-milk cheese. Photo via The Mercury.com.au

“CHEESE-LOVERS took heart when Food Standards Australia New Zealand agreed to take a second look at if it would allow cheese to be made with raw milk in Australia. The resulting report released recently, however, has brought them no cheer.

After examining all the options, FSANZ virtually has recommended leaving things as they are.

Slow Food promoting raw milk cheese

From the 3 Wheeled Cheese blog:

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“Slow Food has been fighting for the rights of consumers to buy raw milk and the rights of cheesemakers to make cheese from raw milk for almost two decades, and its biennial event, Cheese, has long been a forum for publicizing the issue. This year Cheese 2011 sees the launch of a new Slow Food campaign site for raw milk, www.slowfood.com/rawmilk. As part of the campaign, an international panel of cheesemakers, experts and cheesemongers came together today to share their experiences and describe the situation in their own countries.

Irish raw milk ban is being proposed

From 3WheeledCheese:

Photo via the "3 Wheeled Cheese" story excerpted below.

“The proposal to ban unpasteurised cow’s milk is due to a lack of understanding of its myriad benefits.

IN IRELAND, we produce the best milk in the world, along with the best farmhouse cheeses and, of course, the best beef.

And our bureaucratic scientists want to stop us enjoying that good milk, the mother’s milk of the land.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has proposed that the sale of unpasteurised milk should be banned completely. It does not favour regulation, it favours a total ban.

Artisan raw milk cheese safe for now from FDA meddling with 60-day rule

From Barry Estabrook at Politics of the Plate.com

“Earlier this year, cheese lovers who view raw milk as a sacred cow, feared that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) planned to sharply limit or even ban the manufacture and sale of raw milk cheese. It would have been a loss not only for connoisseurs, but for anyone who cares about rural economies and sustainable food systems. Artisan cheese is a big part of the solution. Fortunately, it appears that the fears were exaggerated.

The role played  by artisan cheese making in rural renewal was driven home to me recently when I chatted with Angela Miller, a New York literary agent who, with her architect husband Russel Glover, bought Consider Bardwell Farm in 2000. Although it has prospered as Vermont’s first dairy cooperative in the mid 1800s, the farm had suffered the fate of many once-prosperous New England dairies. For a decade prior to Miller’s purchase, it had been defunct, its barns and outbuildings sitting empty, its fields ungrazed. There was talk of converting the land into a military training ground.

Raw milk cheeses have unique appeal — but now FDA wants to change the rules

From Susan Salasky at the Detroit Free Press:

John and Erika Aylward, co-owners of the Boulevard Market in Tecumseh, sell cheeses made in their licensed creamery. Photo via Detroit Free Press

People who love raw milk cheeses and those who make them say what sets the cheeses apart is the distinctive flavors and the way they can change from season to season.

Whether the taste is tangy, sweet, grassy or creamy, aficionados say, it’s almost always memorable.