Raw milk dairy is one of those touchy subjects that decays into political debate. It is difficult to get to the bottom of whether or not raw milk products are a danger to anybody.
Many artisan cheesemakers, such as Nick Haddow at the Bruny Island Cheese Company [pictured], say not; the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association says raw milk is irrelevant; and Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FANZ) says it is downright dangerous.
The truth is that in Europe raw milk cheeses such as Roquefort and Parmiagiano-Reggiano have been made for hundreds of years and few, if any, casualties have been reported.
“The biggest thing that governs cheesemaking is regulation,” says Haddow. And what regulation holds back is diversity in the availability of milk as most milk, from cows in particular, is pasteurised in bulk.
Most cheesemakers agree that just because milk is raw doesn’t mean a cheese will be a better product, although in some cases it will be. The argument for raw milk is one about enabling small producers to make cheese easily from the paddock to plate and to encourage diversity and local development rather than bulk dairy herds.
It also will allow local innovation with cheesemakers being able to use new recipes for cheese with milk that has a greater diversity of microbes in it than the pasteurised product.
Australia does have a raw milk movement with milk being sold in farmers’ markets and through organic shops as “bath milk” with warnings that it is not for human consumption. Such is the strength of feeling, FANZ presented a discussion paper in 2008 and called for submissions on the regulation of raw milk products in 2009 and now is assessing the submissions.
Current food standards require that raw milk products be pasteurised (heated to 71.7C for 15 to 20 seconds) or, for cheese, processed so that the milk is thermised (heated to at least 62C for 15 seconds) and the cheese is stored for at least 90 days at 2C. For cheeses that are curd cooked (extra hard grating cheeses such as Parmiagiano-Reggiano) – the curd is heated to at least 48C, the final product stored for at least six months and has a final moisture content of less than 36 per cent.
The thing about the FANZ regulations is that they are inconsistent. In 2003, cheese importer Will Studd was forced to destroy 30kg of the raw milk Roquefort by FANZ and in response held a public funeral for the cheese and began a campaign to allow Roquefort to be imported. The same regulations that resulted in the cheese’s destruction also meant that in theory Parmiagiano-Reggiano should not be allowed to be consumed in Australia. But because of the potential for uproar among the country’s Italian community, it created the above loophole.
And it is through this loophole that Bruny Island’s Haddow is producing his raw milk cheese, C2 which has been in development for over four years. “We’re allowed to make it,” he says. “We’ve just got an issue in being able to sell it.”
Haddow already has some 80 wheels of the cheese made to the standards but he has to keep them quarantined and is unable to release them to the public because of a technicality in the processing of the paperwork.
“I’m flat out making it and all the indications are that it will be allowed to be released,” Haddow says. He says the first of his C2 milk cheese will be ready for release in November to his cheese club members and then at his cellar door.
New Zealand is about to revise its laws to allow raw milk cheese and Haddow already reports that one large cheese producer from over the Tasman has contacted him about developing their own raw products.