Americans have never had access to the cheese they deserve.
Basically the article says that most Americans don't know what real cheese taste like because they've never had any. There is some truth to the article. That's IF you define cheese that is only made from pasteurized milk as “bogus cheese”. ☺
According to the article, “real cheese” or rather “really good tasting cheese” is made from unpasteurized milk and that Americans are regulating cheese imports based on a law enacted because a health scare 80 years ago. You won't hear any Europeans complaining because "Hey! More good cheese for them!" I wonder, since the Chinese have started consuming more diary products, if they are also enjoying this good real cheese.
Per Mark Hay, the article writer:
“In 1944, the federal government, ... concerned by the number of outbreaks, recommended that all cheese be made from pasteurized milk or that raw milk cheeses be aged sufficiently to let nasty germs in it die off.”
“Regardless of the merits of the rule at the time, no one bothered to review it until the late 1980s.”
“Meanwhile, Europe has developed rules that accommodate all manner of raw milk cheese but still keep people relatively safe, broadly working with existing traditions to find steps at which hygiene can be monitored and ensured.”
“In 1985, America suffered one of its greatest modern foodborne illness outbreaks, which killed over two-dozen people, ten of them infants. It was traced to a cheese plant using raw milk. … But after the 1985 incident, calls emerged to ban all raw milk cheese.”
Other significant cheese incidents occurred after 1985. Check the article for additional details.
Pretty much the article concludes:
Americans! You don't know what you're missing!
YUM! YUM!
YUM! YUM!
Using Mr. Hay's exact words:
“It’s just shocking to realize how much of America’s food ecosystem, and ultimately of our palates as Americans, were locked into place decades ago by chance forces and best-guess science. But that’s how one winds up in a nation where it is, and likely will for some time be, easier to get an assault rifle than a wheel of OG French Camembert.”
Ouch! That part about the assault rifle really hurt. I am heart broken. I always considered myself a cheese lover. Only to find out that all this time I haven't been eating real cheese. 😢😢
The article writer has convinced me that perhaps America does need to revisit and maybe revise the raw milk cheese importing regulations. After all, there are people in other countries around the world enjoying these cheeses made from unpasteurized milk and they aren't dropping like flies.
I'm definitely curious now as to what I've been missing all my life. Are you?
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