St. Louis Today has published an article about a renowned cheese master, Max McCalman, who – surprise, surprise – is an evangelist for raw (real) cheese. Here is a quote from the article [bold emphasis mine].
“I feel very passionate about them, and I’ve studied them extensively,” McCalman says. “Raw-milk cheese has a great food-safety record. We can eat raw oysters and eat raw meat in this country if we want to, but not raw-milk cheese. There’s something wrong with that, especially since cheese hasn’t been implicated in as many food-poisoning issues as raw seafood, raw meat or even raw vegetables.”
Federal regulations require raw-milk cheeses sold in the United States to be aged at least 60 days. As a result, what many cheese experts consider to be authentic versions of brie, Camembert and more great cheeses of the world cannot be purchased in America.
While the FDA and USDA have made real cheese – as enjoyed by people all over the world – illegal, Cheez Whiz, and similar processed-plasticized, chemical-based products that masquerade as cheese, gets a pass. However, unaged, raw cheeses, especially from France and Italy, can be found at some small retailers, if you look hard enough. That aside, we can all rest easily knowing that the agents of the United States Customs Service are trained to suspect that any cheese coming across the border is likely to be raw, and if found out, it will be confiscated.
They (foreigners) hate us because we’re so safe.
