Setting the Cheez Whiz Standard.

When French farmer lose Bove drove his tractor into a newly built McDonald's to protest corporate disregard for local and traditional dietary preferences, he hadn't anticipated the most recent challenge to small-scale farmers. While Bove has been sentenced to three months in prison for vandalism, two major food-standard bodies are weighing rules that would put his farm out of business for good by banning cheeses made from unpasteurized milk.

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Codex Alimentarius (the U.N. and World Trade Organization's standard-setting body) have looked into banning such cheeses based on presumed concerns over food safety, though there is no scientific or health data suggesting cheeses made from unpasteurized milk amount to a public health risk. So far, the Codex has rejected a request from its U.S. members--including the makers of Cheez Whiz and other pasteurized-process cheeses--to allow only pasteurized cheese to be sold. The FDA is still toying with the idea.

Mandatory pasteurization would eliminate the highly distinctive aromas, textures, colors, and flavors that raw milk cheeses afford--all made possible by bacteria which is specific to the breed of cow that produced the milk and the sort of grass the cow munched. This ban would affect such varieties as Swiss Gruyere, French Camembert and Roquefort (the native cheese of Jose Bove's home region), Indian paneer, English farmhouse cheddar, and Italian Gorgonzola and even Parmigiano-Reggiano, among others. Dun Gifford, president of the Boston-based Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust (www.oldwayspt.org) that researches and promotes the value of traditional diets, says that the possible legislation would amount to "an arrow in the throat of a burgeoning movement back to farm-produced foods."

Farmers who still make cheese from milk produced on their own farms can assure the safety of the cheese process through direct contact with their herd. In contrast, a multinational giant like Kraft foods may buy milk from sources on several different continents, which is then shipped via tanker to storage silos or processing plants thousands of miles away, and delivered in its final form to every corner of the globe--where it may sit for months before being consumed. Such endless opportunities for contamination demand food sterilization, either by pasteurization or by adding a cocktail of chemical preservatives. Fabricated products like Velveeta and Cheez Whiz would become the models of safe and healthy food.

Mandatory pasteurization represents an end-of-the-pipe food safety fix that neglects the root causes of contamination--breakneck industrial processing, poor animal hygiene, or growing distance between farmer and consumer. The proposed banning of unpasteurized cheese leads down a slippery slope of arbitrary hygiene standards. Is the next step mandatory food irradiation and chlorine dips for all fresh fruit and vegetables? As local and organic produce continues to make inroads, it is important for consumers to voice their opposition to growing attempts--sometimes in the guise of food safety--to homogenize, standardize, and sterilize the global food supply.

Brian Halweil, Staff Researcher