 | Tomorrow morning, long before dawn, I'll stumble out to the car and drive up to Torino for Slowfood's Salone del Gusto, a bi-annual event dedicated to the celebration and preservation of traditional foodstuffs and the ways of life that make them possible. Said like this it sounds hoity-toity, but since many traditional foods cannot be made industrially the movement really is about preserving ways of life.
To give an example, there are periodic pushes in the US to require that all cheese be made from pasteurized milk. After all, say those promoting this provision, if the milk is pasteurized, the cheese will be more sanitary, right?
Wrong. By the time a cheese has aged for 2 months all the pathogenic bacteria are dead. And even before then cheese made from unpasteurized milk is safe; if it weren't there would be a tremendous number of sick Europeans, because many fresh raw-milk cheeses, for example French Brie, Piemontese Toma, and Campanian Mozzarella, are extremely popular. There aren't.
Who would a cheese-only-from-pasteurized-milk law favor? Big dairies that can afford pasteurizing equipment.
And who would it harm, in the US? Consumers, who would find themselves unable to purchase cheeses such as Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padano, Gorgonzola, Pecorino Romano, Roquefort, English Cheddar, and the list goes on.
But more importantly, it would harm small American dairy farmers and sheepherders, who have discovered that making high quality artisan raw-milk cheeses gives them a means to survive. If the FDA were to approve this regulation, many would simply go out of business because they cannot afford the equipment, while others would collapse more slowly because the quality of their cheese would decline (pasteurizing makes a dramatic difference in the flavor of the cheese), and people would then buy the cheaper industrial versions. Think what this would do to the rural economies of States like Vermont or Wisconsin.
One would expect the US National Dairy Association to be against the provision, but a few years ago it supported it because the larger members that supply industry have more pull.
This is a classic Slowfood issue, about preserving a way of life, and giving consumers the option of buying good quality food. And much more practical than hoity-toity. |
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