Are the world’s great cheeses in danger of extinction at the hands of germophobe regulators? Officials with the federal Food and Drug Administration, whose job description includes being obsessively vigilant about food-borne pathogens, say no — or at least not anytime soon.
Fear spread through the cheese world this week after comments by FDA officials hinted at stricter regulations for cheesemakers using wood shelving — a common part of the cheese-aging process and crucial in the process of creating some of the world’s most flavorful varieties.
“Cheese is not just milk that’s coagulated. It’s a confluence of environment,” said Laura Werlin, cheese expert and instructor at The Cheese School of San Francisco. “The wood shelving (on which cheese is aged) allows for the microbe village that creates the flavors, texture and rind of cheese,” qualities that let the cheese grow and develop into “what it’s supposed to be,” Werlin told KQED’s Mina Kim in an interview Wednesday (audio embedded below).
In recent statements, the FDA warned that those wood shelves and boards could also harbor pathogens — like the illness-causing bacteria Listeria monocytogenes — because they cannot be adequately cleaned. Thus, they do not conform to regulations pertaining to plant equipment and utensils. In a letter sent to New York state officials earlier this year, regulators wrote that proper cleaning and sanitation are “absolutely necessary to ensure that pathogens do not find niches to reside and proliferate.”
The statements sent waves of dismay through the cheese world, which depends on the wooden shelves for the production of many beloved cheeses.