Posted on 06/09/2014 8:47:13 AM PDT by Rusty0604
Old guy in the cell: What are you in for?
New guy in the cell: I aged cheese on wooden boards.
Old guy: Oh. (Moves away slowly.)
From Walter Olson at Overlawyered, the FDA has interpreted the Food Safety Modernization Act to preclude the aging of cheese on wood boards. Much as you may not think this touches your life, it does if you happen to enjoy any better cheese than velveeta. From CheeseUnderground:
A sense of disbelief and distress is quickly rippling through the U.S. artisan cheese community, as the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week announced it will not permit American cheesemakers to age cheese on wooden boards.
And, one would presume that this also means cheeses aged in France on wood boards won’t be allowed into the country. There will be mass cheese seizures at the border, with camembert dumped into the Atlantic like bales of marijuana.
But don’t despair, cheese lovers. Monsanto-Halliburton Cheese Corporation products never touch wood. And a little recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) has never been conclusively proven to harm any child.
If you were concerned that Gibson Guitars presented an unnecessary show of force when the SWAT team rolled in to seize the offending ebony fretboards, it won’t be much prettier to have the armored vehicle crash through a cheesemaker’s door.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.simplejustice.us ...
You should adopt a Longer View of Progressive tyranny. They will keep squeezing, and be startled when there is a massive reaction.
Does this mean aging in wooden casks may soon be next?
DK
Damnit, my body decided I was lactose intolerant two years ago so the only milk products I can have are those treated or well aged cheese, most of which are aged on wood.
Damnit, my body decided I was lactose intolerant two years ago so the only milk products I can have are those treated or well aged cheese, most of which are aged on wood.
Kroger makes a decent lactose free milk called “Carbmatser” milk that isn’t half bad and has a really good protein to calorie ratio.
“milk that isn’t half bad...”
Only drink the good half:)
The wood does more than just absorb excess moisture. It imparts distinctive flavors absorbed by the cheese, depending on what wood is used and how the wood is treated. Cheddar, Swiss, and many other aged cheeses would not taste the same without the wood, which has been in-use for over a millennium.
And home made whiskey, although it is illegal and I would never drink it. I just mean I like it in a metaphysical sense. Yeah.
Single Malt? LOL!
Even the USDA admits that it increases mastitis in this pro rBGH article.
Less partisan studies, such as this by Canadian Veterinarians, show a marked increase in mastitis and an increase in culling (thereby decreasing the productive life of a cow).
I have no problems with farmers choosing to use the drug or not, but allowing the market to decide is the best route. Anecdotally, my friends who own dairies chose not to use rBGH for the reasons stated above--long before the consumer scares made it popular. And BTW, arguing that not adopting a change can be the reason for any change (such as price) is not remotely logical.
That’s right. Much better cheese than Velveeta.
I still mourn raw, unpasteurized apple cider.
Soilent Green is made of . . . well you know but it ISN’T aged on wood! Welcome to Government Food Sourcing!
jimfr,
For your perusal, this is something I sent to a friend who teaches culinary arts. Kind of raw research material upon which I have no real agenda — I love my wood cutting boards...
UC-Davis Food Safety Laboratory: Cutting Board Research: http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm
i’d like to take a cheese grater to the nads of every fda food nazi.
Wood has been proved to be far EASIER to sanitize because disinfectants can soak INTO the wood, saturating the fibers, killing the bacteria, while both plastic and stainless steel do not allow that to happen. Plastic is impervious to fluids. Stainless is even more problematic because years of cutting and scratches results in micro-abrasions that bacteria can colonize and no matter how wet one makes the surface of the metal, the natural molecular tension of the fluid of the disinfectant makes it impossible to reach down into the deepest recesses of those abrasions! Wood, being able to absorb the disinfectant naturally blots the disinfectant (an excellent one is a dilute solution of bleach) through capillary action and transports it all the way down to areas beyond where bacteria might have a chance to contact food and kills the bacteria.
This was discovered to be a problem at Monterey Bay Aquarium where they were having problems in their food preparation area for the fish. . . once they discarded their stainless steel counters and returned to wooden counters that could be properly disinfected, the problems disappeared.
Another thing to consider is that CHEESE is inherently a bacteriological phenomenon. CHEESE is a bi-product of micro-biological digestion (fermentation) converting milk products. There is a good chance that the REASON these cheeses are award winning is the micro-organisms that exist in those very boards they are aged on! Think bleu cheese, limburger, etc., as is beer, wine, and many other properly prepared food products. Sour Dough, bread rising (yeast), etc. Are these idiotic Food Police going to arrest ALL biologic micro-organisms that contact food?
Feeding cows is inherently dangerous. There is a number of people, which is greater than one, each year that are killed by living cows. Ergo, the act of merely feeding cows and keeping them alive, is, by its very nature, dangerous to some one, somewhere! Ergo it is imperative that we should immediately b an cows!
I am also certain that someone has also been killed by a kitten. . . so we should also ban kittens. Shall we talk about people killing people? Oh, what to do. . .
One of my favorite things is bleu cheese (the real thing). Another is sourdough bread. And I’ve never gotten ill from eating them.
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