Is the raw milk review biased?

Finally some news – or perhaps information – has emerged from Food Standards ANZ on the submissions last year on the review of raw milk processing standards. FANZ has distributed this pdf which I can’t seem to find on their website where it discusses raw milk products (but their again I have a short attention span if I can’t find something easily).

If you are new to this debate the standards in Australia are inconsistent and the current review is typical bureaucracy.

Thanks to lobbying by cheese dude Will Studd Roquefort, which at one point was banned, is now allowed to be imported. Those same standards that banned raw milk cheese it turned out would ban grana parmigiano so to avoid a revolt the standards were tweaked.

This tweaking created a loophole by which it can be prodiuced locally but the cheese establishment is against making raw milk cheese and I’m told behind the scenes is doing what it can to stop the Bruny Island Cheese Company put out it’s own raw milk cheese made under this rule.

At least that’s how I think it works.

The big worry about this document it that is smells rather highly of bias although it is really only a summary of the views submitted. It says: ” A petition submitted with over 330 signatures has been counted as one submission, however, the message in the petition has been taken into account in the analysis of the submissions.” hmmm.

So it appears all us enthusiasts who filled in the form are counted as one. Now I wish I’d sent my own opinion in to these not particularly amusing buggers.

The good news is that, according to the email I received: “There will be two more opportunities to provide comments on the Proposal when the Assessment Reports are released for public consultation.”

Perhaps we should learn from this and mobilise some other way rather than fill in a form.

As a last point thing I do agree with: “The expertise and affiliations of the members of the Standard Development Committee and Dairy Scientific Advisory Panel for the Proposal were queried and it was suggested that they do not adequately represent raw milk products industry and artisan cheese making.”