FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

One thing to be aware of, pasteurization adds costs to dairy products. So it is being done for a real reason, not just "because".

Companies will never pay to do anything unless not doing it will open them up to a law suit. So, raw milk does have some risks just based upon the the fact it costs to pasteurize milk.

At what point do they just get shut down?

The whole of France is eating quite a lot of unpasteurized cheese. If done correctly, it can be quite safe. Although of course contamination does happen if a significant proportion of your cheese production nationwide is unpasteurized, that's just a numbers game. So yes, it is par for the course, but probably not at this level where the same producer shows up over and over again.

I guess this producer must be extremely confident to be refusing a recall in such a litigious jurisdiction as the USA. Or maybe they've just made the right campaign donations and feel safe enough...

Heating milk to destroy pathogens has a name. It was named after the guy who originally discovered the process, Louis Pasteur.

Isn't the amount of cheese determined by amount of fat/protein in the milk itself and pasteurized is sometimes skimmed?

Ricotta and paneer appear to be high-heat cheeses, where pasteurization is implicit in the first step even if the milk wasn't pasteurized to begin with.

Cheddar, the kind of cheese allegedly at issue in this outbreak, appears to be a low-heat cheese, so you wouldn't start by heating the milk to pasteurization temps. If the milk isn't already pasteurized, the resulting cheese might be contaminated.

European soft cheese makers allegedly follow protocols to ensure that there's not substantial bacterial contamination in the beginning; they carefully handle the milk through the beginning of the cheesemaking process, after which the culture and salt and acidification stall any further bacterial growth; then aging cuts down any bacterial population to safe levels, and it's never reached a level where it could produce dangerous levels of toxins.

Competent American raw-cheese makers would do the same thing, but in the interest of supplying "raw milk product" fanatics, unscrupulous businesses will cut corners for profit. High contamination levels of the initial raw milk, or substantial cross-contamination after aging, is probably what led to this and the company's previous cheese contamination problems.

You're just pasteurizing the raw milk at home by heating it. But it's interesting that pasteurizing at home right before use still makes better cheese than store bought pasteurized milk. Wonder why. Perhaps raw milk is just superior for reasons besides its lack of pasteurization? In the US at least it's only the very premium milk that can be bought raw.

When I make raw milk cheese (small commercial, USA) the milk gets only about 1-3 degrees (Fahrenheit!) above the cows body temperature.

Also our family has been drinking raw milk all our lives, and there are a lot of people who come to our farm and get raw milk to drink.

I'm not aware of anyone ever getting sick from our milk (unless lactose intolerant/allergic of course).

If you are heating your milk to 85C, I'm sorry, but that's not really raw milk cheese anymore. When I make pasteurized cheese the milk is heated to only 63C (albeit for 30 minutes).

Or he's just a traditionalist as he's stated many times, and for a Western European cow (and all derivative products like milk, cheese, beef) are up there with wheat. Bread and butter is a common phrase.

Or there is some big conspiracy and he's trying to get rich at the detriment to his own health, or he's trying to get rich and his entire persona and diet is fake?

There's almost no discernible difference between unhomogenized pasteurized milk and raw milk, both tasted directly and in the final cheese. As a working chef* I had to be taught to detect the difference, and now that I'm not doing it regularly I doubt I even could.

* at the time at a michelin star restaurant, not to brag but because the finesse of my palate is directly relevant and likely to be called into question.

A local small grocery chain started stocking raw milk (with many warnings) and I decided to risk consuming it to see for myself. I couldn't tell the difference between it and ordinary full fat milk. I wondered if it was a fraud (commercial milk falsely advertised as Local Forbidden Delicacy Milk), but maybe there's not much difference. Or maybe I am not a subtle taster. I also can't taste the superiority of an $80 bottle of wine when it's pitted against an $18 bottle.

That would get in the way of Arstechnica's hyper liberal bias. I eat raw cheese because it tastes good. It's common in France, like in reblochon and Brie de meaux. There aren't mass deaths in France because of this.

I remember growing up, my dad’s family had cows and we would drink the milk raw. The main feature for me was how thick it was. Even the whole milk I buy at stores here is very thin.

There is no taste difference between raw and pasteurized milk. The taste comes from the container. If you have both in glass, there is no discernible difference. My father is a dairy farmer and bet his professor (many years ago) that he could taste the difference. The professor setup a blind taste test where he gave my father pasteurized and raw milk in glass cups. There was no difference.

"Nutritional value" is a very ambiguous. It's only in what you measured. Raw milk advocates are going to value things like bacteria and if proteins were changed. Pasteurization by definition is going to kill the bacteria and change the protein structure. The main benefit for pasteurization is that it makes milk a commodity. You can have unsanitary farms with high bacteria counts that don't make people sick. This is both good and bad. Good because it means more milk available with less disease. Bad because our bodies are complex and some bacteria is healthy.

My recommendation is that if someone wants to consume raw milk, they should have a personal relationship with the dairy.

Most of what people like about "Raw milk" is that it is not homogenized. The cream has not been emulsified thoroughly, so the mouth feel can be different.

You can sometimes find pasteurized milk that hasn't been homogenized in order to get the good mouth feel without drinking absurdly unsafe bacteria culture.

Raw milk advocates claim is does shit like fix allergies and cure diseases.

> Raw Farm, is rejecting the regulator’s findings and refusing to voluntarily recall its cheese.

The FDA has mandatory and "voluntary" recalls. The FDA could require Raw Farms to recall their products if they had a strong enough case.

This is mostly a non-story.

Our Constitution accounts for government agents gone awry so there is back and forth. The FDA can go as far as mandating a recall but they need evidence, which they obviously lack at this point or they would just mandate the recall.

This is some FDA operatives using the rules and a PR campaign to wage war on raw dairy, something that is not new in this country at all.

I think you can usually just assume us food standards are worse - same reason I wouldn't order steak tartare here.

It sounds like the farm in question also sells raw milk anyway so their standards for safety might be worse on top of that.

They've got some evidence, 7 known cases over three states all linked to the same product. The history of problems from this producer makes it seem more likely to be true. A lot of companies would rather have their customers throw away their product and buy it again from a different batch than risk having their customers get violently sick or dead from their food because the people who get sick and survive can end up with a very strong aversion to the brand and/or product going forward, and voluntarily recalling the product just to be safe is good from a PR stance since it looks like you actually care about your customers.

> Whether or not it's 'healthier' is kind of ephemeral and not really for the FDA to decide.

Some raw milk producers and nut jobs claim that raw milk will cure or treat things like allergies, asthma, psoriasis, diabetes, high blood pressure, lactose intolerance, and arthritis. Those kinds of false claims along with their unproven claims on the nutritional difference are exactly what the FDA is supposed to address.

Flavor is ephemeral. Whether or not something contains a vitamin or cures asthma is not.

Fermented meat is a thing. I know the thought of it is disgusting but corned beef is fermented meat. The best is when the bacteria eat at the connective and the meat gets a slightly foam texture. I make it about once a year.

I don't know if there's a catchy name for it, but if you spend a lifetime in an environment where many serious diseases have been eradicated or nearly eradicated by vaccines it's easy to start to believe that the vaccines do nothing. This is true of so many other things as well - people take norms that make their life possible/livable for granted until they're gone.

I don't really see a solution here. It just seems like human nature.