"Every victory for raw milk is a victory for cheesemakers everywhere." Photograph from Wikimedia Commons For almost two years now, we at Serious Eats have been following France's long and arduous battle over raw milk Camembert. Last spring we reported that the clash had been settled—that French authorities had ruled that cheese made from lightly pasteurized milk could not be called A.O.C. Camembert. This week Business Week ran an interesting and detailed piece on the issue, which reports that the two large corporations that had been lobbying for pasteurized Camembert, and that had ceased production of raw milk cheese entirely, are now in fact considering a return to raw milk production. Ultimately this is a victory for traditional foodways and...
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Where to find hard-to-find "forbidden foods" in Chicago including absinthe, foie gras, Iberico bellota ham, raw milk, Szechuan peppercorn, and unpasteurized cheese....
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The New York Times weighs in on the raw milk controversy more than six months after our coverage began. In January of this year on Serious Eats Nathalie Jordi linked to a fascinating story in Salon that dramatically depicts the starkly different positions of raw milk advocates and opponents. Raw milk proponents claim that not only is it safe to drink, it can cure and reduce the effects of debilitating diseases like eczema, arthritis, and asthma. The subject of the Times story, Nina Planck, is a passionate raw milk advocate. The Centers for Disease Control is equally emphatic about the potential hazards of drinking raw milk, citing evidence that in recent years, children and adults have contracted E. coli and...
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A tale of raw milk intrigue from Brooklyn, New York. It turns out it's legal to possess and drink raw milk. But it's a crime to sell it. Sounds like a case for one of those dismissed U.S. attorneys....
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Time Magazine's Wendy Cole, on how law enforcement is cracking down on raw milk suppliers: Richard Hebron, 41, was driving along an anonymous stretch of highway near Ann Arbor, Mich., last October when state cops pulled him over, ordered him to put his hands on the hood of his mud-splattered truck and seized its contents: 453 gal. of milk.Yes, milk. Raw, unpasteurized milk. To supply a small but growing market among health-conscious city and suburban dwellers for milk taken straight from the udder, Hebron was dealing the stuff on behalf of a farming cooperative he runs in southwestern Michigan. An undercover agricultural investigator had infiltrated the co-op as part of a sting operation that resulted in the seizure of...
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Last week we brought up the raw-versus-pasteurized milk debate. This week, we've got homogenization on our minds....
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Like eggs and alcohol, the public opinion on raw milk swings back and forth according to the fashions of the day. Salon's stance on whether unpasteurised milk is safe to drink? "In a word, no." [Preclick courtesy: You'll have to sit through an ad before viewing this link's contents]...
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