Yes, I am fully aware that this is a fashion-centric blog. But sometimes a person must take a stand on matters that exceed the sartorial. On matters of grave importance. On matters of personal taste and therefore personal freedom.
So - coagulated, acidified milk is a delicious thing.
Sure, its high fat content isn't particularly good for one's mid section, but it is healthier than baked goods, and - at least as far as I am concerned - much harder to resist. Granted, it is not for the faint of stomachs as this cute scene from a silly but adorable movie I similarly can never resist when it comes up in the gym:
My personal favorite is a French, semi-soft cheese known for the village that began producing it and easily recognizable for the thin black line that runs down its middle - Morbier. For most of this year, however, Morbier was nowhere to be found Stateside. Apparently the FDA (regulatory authority responsible for food and drug) found something to be wrong with a batch). Devotees - moi! - were left bereft and orphaned, their treats a scarcity.
Apparently this deficit was just an opening shot in a larger campaign by the FDA - there are now - wait for it - ALLEGATIONS!! NYMag reports:
Reasons You Should Be Troubled by the FDA’s Cheese-Aging Regulations
It's been a weird few days for people who love good cheese, particularly wheels of American farmstead cheese aged on wooden boards: Last week, it seemed as if the FDA had moved to ban aging cheese on wood, a practice almost as old as coagulated dairy itself and the production aspect that turns Comté into, well, Comté. New York's Department of Agriculture got curious as to why the agency had all of a sudden cited several producers for doing something New York and practically every other state permit, so the FDA replied it was simply enforcing long-standing policy, not doing anything new: Wood, being porous, "cannot be adequately cleaned and sanitized," which sounds bad, and besides, Listeria outbreaks have plagued the cheese industry as recently as March.
[...] While the agency's position on aging cheese on wooden boards seems to be more clear, it's uncertain whether this will become an eventual focus of industrywide enforcement[...] If the rules were eventually enforced, here are.. reasons why it would be a huge deal.
1. The rule-tightening could apply to imported cheeses. Bid adieu to"the great majority" of foreign fromage, says Cornell's Rob Ralyea. Rob Kaufelt, owner of Murray's Cheese, tells Grub, "Comté, Beaufort, and others like that would effectively disappear."
4. There's not much science backing the FDA up. This fight revolves around its contention that wood grows bad bacteria like Listeria, but critics — who have centuries of tradition on their side — counter that good bacteria, like what live in yogurt, are the point of wood aging. They're ready with studies showing the process is neutral at worst, beneficial at best. Says Saxelby: "There's more listeriosis from pasteurized cheese and deli meat than from wood-aged cheese."
5. Cheese aged on anything else tastes weird, comparatively speaking. "The thing about wood," Saxelby explains, "is it breathes. If you put something on a plastic or metal shelf versus a wood shelf, the stuff that sits on the plastic or metal shelf isn't going to be able to breath and isn't going to ripen properly."
6. The move would favor Big Cheese, where wood-aging is impracticable. "I'm not given to speculation about these kinds of theories, mind you, but some are saying it's maybe because the large producers have been losing market share against what we call 'the good stuff' these days," Kaufelt says, before clarifying: "Though I suspect it's more bureaucratic."
7. Finally, cheesemakers aren't dairy's Appalachian moonshiners."We use strict testing and sanitary procedures," Kaufelt says. "It's been that way since the beginning, since we first worked with [the Department of Agriculture]. They're strict, and have to be."
* * *
As a former Soviet citizen I dislike scarcity, especially one caused by inane governmental incursions into the market. Think about it - the very same FDA that found an innocuous cheese guilty just recently approved an incredibly powerful narcotic painkiller - and that in a smack of a resurgent heroin epidemic in the country, caused - by and large - by painkillers that act as potent gateways. Hence, pardon me for questioning the wisdom of said governmental agency as it attempts to regulate MY CHEESE!Don't F--k with my cheese!
No comments:
Post a Comment