For they shall inherit Obama’s Food Safety Modernization Act;
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.
[…]
“The very pillar that we built our niche business on is the ability to age our cheese on wood planks, an art that has been practiced in Europe for thousands of years,” Roelli says. Not allowing American cheesemakers to use this practice puts them “at a global disadvantage because the flavor produced by aging on wood can not be duplicated. This is a major game changer for the dairy industry in Wisconsin, and many other states.”
As if this weren’t all bad enough, the FDA has also “clarified” – I’m really beginning to dislike that word – that in accordance with FSMA, a cheesemaker importing cheese to the United States is subject to the same rules and inspection procedures as American cheesemakers.
I don’t know why they’re surprised – it’s completely consistent with this administration.
Henseforth, all underwear shall be worn on the outside!
http://youtu.be/6Dnm8N9JbvU
Kiss the whiskey industry goodbye too.
I’m sure that there are many countries that will welcome the cheese industry fleeing the USA. Nothing like bureaucrats going on power trips to make one realize that there is too much government. Way too much.
The real divine joke here is that plain old wood has better antibiotic properties than any man-made material there is.
Bugs grow in the scratches on glass, nylon, metal, you name it. Hell, there’s mold growing on the -outside- of the MIR space station in a radiation-blasted hard vacuum. Nylon cutting boards are notorious for creating salmonella outbreaks, you have to bleach the hell out of them every day. Like, EVERY day.
But bugs won’t grow on wood.
Particularly if you clean it once in a while. As in, just brush the slime off with a bit of primitive soap and a rag. Wooden cutting boards can last generations with medium use and no abuse.
Which is why cheese was made on wooden boards since there’s even been cheese in the world. Also why trees exist. Bacteria, yeasts, molds and fungi can’t eat them. It takes years and years for the elements and the critters to break down a tree.
Admittedly it is more difficult to bring a wooden surface to a state of perfect sterility, but then any surface is hard to sterilize once it gets scuffed up by use. Like I said, bugs hide in the scratches. Bugs are small, right?
Why isn’t plain old wood good enough for the FDA when its been good enough since the Pharaohs? I would hazard a guess that there’s palms being majorly greased at some level. Nobody can ignore the science, there’s too much evidence. Now as to who benefits from a blindingly stupid rule like this, I can’t imagine. Equipment manufacturers? Big Cheese Inc.? Dunno.
Or, it could be a change in fashion at the FDA. Fashions do change, and fashion applies to regulators just as much as hemlines. Maybe more. They’re in business to regulate, so regulate they do. For the better or the worse is less important than following the herd.
Forward!
Of course they’ve done this. Remember, business is evil.
Wisconsin elected a Republican governor who put the unions in their place. Guess it is time to put Wisconsin in their place. That’s how Obama operates.
Don’t be afraid of harsh cheeses; just Edam and Gouda!
I’m pretty sure the Beatitudes didn’t include the verse:
“The moronic shall inherit the earth.”
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
It must be necessary because so many people are dying each and every day from tainted cheese. Oh, wait.
Wood is actually a very good material to use especially for a cutting board. Moisture is drawn into and through the wood, depriving any bacteria on the surface the moisture it needs to survive. Plastic and metal surfaces allow the water to remain on the surface providing pools of water for bacteria to grow in.
I often wondered how I survived all these years. We have a big, heavy wooden butchers block on our countertop that we do all our food prep on. Its been there since we got married 12 years ago. It gets wiped off daily, maybe, a good scrub once a week, maybe, and over the last decade I have taken a belt sander to it twice and re oiled it. No one in the family had died, not even once!
Just more crony capitalism. Destroy the competition in the name of safety thus giving more business to the large corporations that buy these laws with their political donations.
Horrible thing to see how they water boarded terrorists and wooden boarded American cheese.
Give Present Obama credit for stopping these terrible practices..
In my entire medical career I have never treated one single individual suffering from food poisoning from cheese. There is nothing more disruptive than an underworked bureaucrat.
Thanks Joe. That is brilliant, it captures the new U.S. ‘reality’ perfectly.
This is really about Climate Change, Obama style. In order to get rid of the harmful, planet altering flatulences from your basic bovine, you can’t just ban them… But you can eviscerate the by-product industries of bovinosity. first they came for the delicious cheeses, next will be planked steak, corned beef (ethanol, don’t you know), will give way to curried goat, braised ribs to tofu knucklets, Jello to ?(won’t matter, once Bill Cosby’s gone, the Dems will force the brand to retire). Cows will become sacred and exported to India as a carbon credit.
Well this certainly explains why the FDA recently went out to purchase sub-machine guns.
Looks like the Obama regime is hell bent on wiping out the cheeser culture.
Next up, whiskey [bourbon?].
Wisconsin, you say? Certainly I have never eaten any cheese in any part of the US that I have visited. They do have funny-looking
orange or cream blocks of stuff – most likely plastic – that they call “cheese.” Noone in their right minds would eat it.
Of course there will be a diplomatic exemption for the upper crust.
Vive les fromages canadiens!
“Spare that wood cutting board, it might not spoil the salad. That is what the research of a food biologist at the Food Research Institute of the University of Wisconsin at Madison indicates.”
…
“Cliver said that he and fellow researcher, Nese O. Ak, found that three minutes after they contaminated new and hacked-up wood and plastic boards with bacteria, 99 per cent of the bacteria on the surface of the wood boards had died. None of the bacteria died on the plastic boards.
Moreover, when the bacteria on plastic boards were held overnight at room temperature, their numbers increased. Meanwhile, no bacteria were found on the wood boards given the same overnight treatment.”
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-02-03/features/1993034002_1_wood-cutting-board-plastic-cutting-bacteria
I have a few wooden cutting boards in regular use… and I’ve yet to die even once. My kids use the wooden ones, none of them have died.
“Why cheesemakers?”
“Probably referring to all manufacturers of dairy products, dear…”
— Life of Brian, Sermon on the Mount scene
You are musing the point. These regulators will become high dollar consultants to the cheese industry after a few years, as they write the regs, and APPOINT THEIR SUCCESSOR, who thereby, owes them. It’s called “honest graft.” When they are hired, they serve as fixers with the regulators, their proteges.
after all, they’ll then be following “the law”.
This is how they will get rid of the private automotive.
Just think how many lives could be saved. In fact its the perfect way to corral folks with no out.
The Obama Mafia strikes again.
LOL there will ALWAYS be a whiskey industry in one form other. Not even Obamunists can end that.
Whey to go, guys!
what ever happened to Vitruvious , the cheese expert?
What a friend we have in cheeses!
For no food more subtly pleases,
Nor plays so grand a gastronomic part;
Cheese imported – not domestic –
For we all get indigestic
From the pasteurizer’s Kraft and sodden art.
No poem we shall ever see is
Quite as lovely as a Brie is,
For the “queen of cheese” is what they call the Brie;
If you pay sufficient money
You will get one nice and runny,
And you’ll understand what foods these morsels be!
How we covet all the skills it
Takes in making Chevre or Tilset,
But if getting basic Pot Cheese is your aim,
Take some simple curds and wheys, a
Bit of rennet – Lo! you’ve Kaese!
(Which is what, in German, is a cheese’s name.)
Good lasagna, it’s a-gotta
Mozzarella and Ricotta
And a lotta freshly grated Parmesan;
With the latter any pasta
Will be eaten up much faster,
For with Parmesan you’ll find a charm is on.
Ask Ignacio Silone
What he thinks of Provolone,
And the very word will set his eyes aflame;
Then go ask the bounteous Gina
Her reaction to Fontina –
If you raise your eyes, you’ll see she feels the same!
A Pont-l’Eveque au point, What ho!
How our juices all will flow!
But don’t touch a Pont-l’Eveque beyond that stage,
For what you’ll have, you’ll surely find
Is just an overfragrant rind –
There’s no benefit to this fromage from age.
Claret, dear, not Coca-Cola,
When you’re serving Gorgonzola –
Be particular to serve the proper wine;
Likewise pick a Beaune not Coke for
Pointing up a Bleu or Roquefort –
Bless the products of the bovines and the vines!
Ave Gouda! Ave Boursault!
Ave Oka even more so!
Ave Neufchatel, Saluto Port Salut!
And another thing with cheeses –
Every allied prospect pleases –
Ah timbale! Ah Welsh Rabbit! Ah fondue!
And we all know that “Say cheese” is
How a cameraman unfreezes
A subject in a stiff, or shy, or dour way;
There’s no other food so useful,
So bring on a whole cabooseful
Of the stuff of life! The cheese of the gourmet!
Exactly. You don’t need to go any farther than Chicago style payback to find the answer for this. A Republican governor who makes things work, now has to make one of the state’s most important industries work with a piano tied to their back.
“The moronic shall inherit the earth.”
I am afraid that they have done so.
With the EPA the Dark Ages are soon upon us. Just wait until the moron Justin Turdo become PM we will get more of the same crap here.
Sorry, the Kennedys control whiskey… and what’s good for the goose is not always good for the gander.
New York State and Vermont produce excellent cheese.
What? Oh, right:
New York State and Vermont produced excellent cheese.
Was a time long ago when the better steak houses here in Calgary served their product on wood platters. That is until some idiot bureaucrat banned them. Managed to pick up a dozen from a restaurant supply house before the ban was extended to retail. IMO there is no more elegant way to serve a morsel of beef – minimal heat loss, easier to cut and quick clean up – just scrub with a coarse brush using hot water & salt then dry overnight.
I made a set of eating boards out of scraps from my wood shop. Oak, cherry, butternut. We use them for cheese and cold cuts “snack lunch”. They are really handy things to eat off.
It’s exactly what the left wants… Nothing but Government Cheese.
“If you like your cheese board, you can keep your cheese board” or is it, “You didn’t make that cheese board”?
laugh all you want, but there is an agenda going on here.
They are trying to ban the farmers market, as its produce has not been inspected, along with your garden for the same reason. Soon all you will be allowed to buy is Monsanto GMO everything.
Vitruvious
http://sagaciousiconoclast.blogspot.ca/2011/10/cheese-process.html
Cheeseboard Obama!
I’ll second that observation as I too have never seen a patient with food poisoning from cheeze. Being a fan of cheezes that are the result of fortuitous ancient bacterial infections, I can’t imagine the degree of stupidity required to come up with such a regulation.
What seems to be totally foreign to the linear thinking bureaucrats is that people have their own complex bacterial ecology and disruptions to that are far more likely to cause problems than the mere presence of certain bacteria. The antimicrobial activity of wood has been brought up, but it’s far more dangerous to take a course of antibiotics than to eat cheeze aged on wooden boards. I have seen people die of C. difficile infections caused by antibiotics inappropriately prescribed for a viral infection. Curious how that particular issue never seems to be addressed by the FDA.
Iowa Jim, that was absolutely brilliant! On a more serious vein, I wonder how long it will be before the US brings in marketing boards for milk, eggs and poultry. You know, just like Canada, eh? They’re missing an enormous bureaucratic utopia.
Canadian supply managed cheese aren’t even be in the same league as wisconsin cheese. It might not beas good as the old euro cheeses but its wonderful and the expiry dates are long…as is their milk and butter….check out the 1-2 week dates on canadian milk, overproduction due to lucrative supply managed prices mean we are always drinking and eating old product. you said you never tried it, i challenge you to try it
Obviously you have never eaten cheeses from the Eastern Townships.
What they need is a higher authority in curd-making located in Israel: Cheeses of Nazareth.
Norwegian artisanal cheeses:
“Pultost is an authentic and crumbly Norwegian cheese made using raw milk from the Telemark cow breed. Traditionally, the milk is separated in wooden trays of pine, which act as a natural preservative and flavourant. Because the wood absorbs excess moisture, there are no chemicals added in the process. Pultost is extremely textural and flavoured by wild cumin grown in the region. Locals serve this delicious, creamy cheese with flatbread, potato and sour cream.”
http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/articles/cheeses-of-norway.aspx
I’ll wager the Norwegians are rather healthy in their cheese-eating.
Maple is the wood choice of commercial kitchens because of the sugar content in the wood, which is a natural antibacterial surface. Also, maple is a closed-grain wood, not allowing the juices and liquids to penetrate deeper into the wood fibers, making it more sterile than an open grain wood such as oak.
Which leads me to the point that oak should NEVER be used as a cutting board, as there is a natural mold which is present in the wood fibers and is activated by water or moisture, hence the wood turning black. It is highly toxic to us and a known carcinogenic. Stay away and throw out your oak cutting boards!!!!
canuck66 –
Thank you for the kind words. I can’t take credit, though; I got it from Willard Espy’s wonderful book An Almanac of Words at Play.
“Obama”‘s?
No.
The Democratic Party‘s bill.
As far as I know, this was just a Democrat wishlist (note the votes are nearly completely partisan in the House, though 15 Republicans in the Senate voted for the Senate version).
Congress should take the blame for Congress’s work, not the President, no matter who’s President. I said that when Bush was President and I say it now, because it’s still good civics.
(I mean, he can take a share for signing it, but it’s not like it was his Signature Achievement or something I can recall him pushing.)
Glacierman: Oak tannins react with metal to turn it black. It’s not a “mold” and it’s not “highly toxic”. I don’t know where that idea came from.
(Oak does make bad cutting boards because it has large, porous grain that’s hard to keep clean, but not because it has any natural mold or any toxic/carcinogenic activity.)
Seek all the rent seeking crony capitalists
with lots of money on good terms with every
Washington heavyweight in both parties and
you have all the perps needing to stand trial.