FDA May Destroy American Artisan Cheese Industry | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

good time to start building some cheese making skills, this story came out two days ago

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an executive decree banning the centuries old practice of aging cheese on wooden boards.  One bureaucrat within the FDA, without surveying all of the scientific literature, and without public commentary, has rattled hundreds of small businesses across the United States.  Consumers who eat any kind of aged cheese should prepare for a potentially catastrophic disruption in the market for artisan, non-processed cheese.

The FDA’s decision will not only harm American cheese makers, but may also bring a halt to the importation of artisan cheeses from abroad  as Canadian and European Union regulators have not imposed such draconian measures and still allow for the use of wood boards to age cheese.  Rob Ralyea of Cornell University’sDepartment of Food Science, commenting on the FDA’s action noted “the great majority of cheeses imported to this country are in fact aged on wooden boards and some are required to be aged on wood by their standard of identity (Comte, Beaufort and Reblochon, to name a few). Therefore, it will be interesting to see how these specific cheeses will be dealt with when it comes to importation into the United States.”

Corporate cheese makers like Leprino and Kraft will be able to weather this regulatory storm — they don’t make cheese, they manufacture cheese, and as such they do not follow the centuries old artisan techniques.  But for small businesses and artisan cheese makers, wood boards are in fact essential to the making of cheese.  As cheese expert Gordon Edgar writes, “wood creates a beneficial environment for cheese. After all, what is cheese but a great achievement of the microbe community?”  Edgar notes that wood is essential to the flavor of artisanal cheeses, it distinguishes it from the large manufactured cheeses:

Over the last 30-40 years cheesemakers here in the states have been trying to use the best practices of traditional cheesemakers to give smaller scale production a taste/quality advantage over the larger (now almost completely automated) factories that dominate the market. These folks have sunk their livelihoods on practices and recipes that rely — in part — on wood aging. It could be devastating for some, not just for replacement costs, but also for the lack of the special difference in flavor and quality that allows them to sell their products at a price that — theoretically — allows them to survive as small players in an agribusiness world.

http://www.forbes.co.....-industry/

FDA appears to be backing down for now

The FDA is backing away (at least temporarily) from a policy statement that declared cheese makers would no longer be able to age their cheese on wooden boards.  The statement caused outrage in the artisan cheese community and consumers quickly came to the aid of the industry signing onto a petition and expressing their outrage through social media.  The American Cheese Society released a position statement, and it was clear that the industry was prepared to fight back if the FDA did not change its position.

Today, the FDA claimed that it in fact had not issued a new policy, they stated:

“The FDA does not have a new policy banning the use of wooden shelves in cheese-making, nor is there any FSMA requirement in effect that addresses this issue. Moreover, the FDA has not taken any enforcement action based solely on the use of wooden shelves.

In the interest of public health, the FDA’s current regulations state that utensils and other surfaces that contact food must be “adequately cleanable” and properly maintained. Historically, the FDA has expressed concern about whether wood meets this requirement and has noted these concerns in inspectional findings. FDA is always open to evidence that shows that wood can be safely used for specific purposes, such as aging cheese.

The FDA will engage with the artisanal cheese-making community to determine whether certain types of cheeses can safely be made by aging them on wooden shelving.”

http://www.forbes.co.....ed-cheese/