Australian raw milk cheese campaign
What can you taste with raw milk? You can taste the breed, the grass that the animal ate, if it comes from the mountains, hills or valleys, you can taste the expertise of the cheesemaker, and so it becomes a pleasure. So difference becomes the real strength.
- Carlo Petrini
Slow Food international president
Sydney 2009
SLOW Food’s campaign to maintain and extend Australian artisan cheesemakers’ right to produce – and for consumers to eat – Australian raw milk cheese has moved to its third phase.
National food regulatory agency Food Standards Australia New Zealand in August 2011 released its second assessment report of a review of raw milk products.
Cheesemonger Will Studd says that there are a number of reasons to object to the second report:
- Australian artisan cheesemakers should not be restricted to the production of Category 1 (hard) cheeses. During the past two decades, international artisan cheese production has enjoyed a significant growth in demand due to a revolution in consumer interest. Many of these cheeses are made from raw milk and are recognised as having an infinitely superior flavour and authentic regional character when compared to similar cheeses made from pasteurised milk.
- The purpose of the Australian Food Standards is to guarantee safe cheese – however the assumptions made in these proposals exaggerate the risks. There is no reason why ANY cheese made from raw milk should represent a greater degree of risk than those produced from pasteurised milk provided recognised international HACCP guidelines are adopted in Australia.
- The proposals do not recognise the changes adopted by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority which recognise European Union standards on raw milk cheese, and allow for the production and sale of raw milk cheese in New Zealand.
- The proposals do not encourage world best practice in cheese or milk production and fail to take into account the difference between the quality of ‘open‘ market milk and the controls on milk quality on the farm for raw milk cheese.
- The proposals are anti-competitive and represent a breach of Australia’s commitment to World Trade Organisation:
a. WTO Article 5.1 requires members to ‘ensure that their sanitary or phytosanitary measures are based on an assessment, as appropriate to the circumstance, of the risks to human, animal or plant life or health, taking into account risk assessment techniques developed by the relevant international organisations’.
b. Article 5.2 states in the assessment of risks: ‘Members shall take into account available scientific evidence’.
c. Article 5.4 states: ‘Members should, when determining the appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection, take into account the objective of minimising trade effects’.
- The proposals are overly prescriptive and do not meet the Council of Australian Government (COAG) guidelines on primary production and processing standards that stipulate an objective of minimal effective regulation.
Background
Slow Food’s Australian raw milk cheese campaign has centred on the fundamental role that milk has had in human nutrition and health for millennia.
‘The domestication of cattle, sheep, goats and other mammals has given us a unique partnership. We draw sustenance from it every day. We drink fresh milk and cream. We eat butter and cheese. Milk is at the very heart of human life.
‘When skilfully made, ripening and maturing at its own pace, and developing flavours and textures of complexity and length, cheese retains the inherent and distinctive qualities of the milk used in its making. It expresses diversity through seasonal and local characteristics, and the art of its maker, like no other primary food.
‘The Australian cheese we eat today is pasteurised, sanitised and uniform. Technology and scientific understanding have been used to limit our choice of cheese. We cannot make and market Australian raw milk cheese. We cannot taste it. We are denied the experience of the unique characteristics of this primary food.’
‘Government regulates the food we eat. It is responsible for public health. We call on government to liberate our cheesemakers, not to harness them.’
Slow Food in Australia supports strong milk production, manufacturing, processing, labelling and quarantine laws.
‘We would not want to jeopardise our enviable reputation as a ‘clean food’ nation. But we already allow raw milk hard-curd cheeses from France and Italy to be imported into this country. Why should our burgeoning artisan cheesemakers be denied the right to make and market Australian cheese from our own raw milk?
‘We have an opportunity to encourage food diversity, build skills and knowledge, and return opportunity to Australia’s rural heartland.
‘We want government to allow Australian dairies to make and market raw milk cheese of quality. We call on government to enable our cheesemakers and consumers to choose.’
How you can help us
Make your views known
Food Standards’ second assessment report is open for public comment. Email your submission by 14 Oct 2011.
Contact your local federal Member of Parliament.
Support Slow Food’s Australian raw milk cheese campaign
Contact:
Elena Aniere
Programme director, East Asia & Oceania
Slow Food
Email
Read Slow Food’s campaign background
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Steve Smith and Lisa Thomas, Michael Shafran. Michael Shafran said: For the full action plan to bring raw-milk cheese to Australia, check out the dedicated Slow Food Australia page: http://bit.ly/f6G5F [...]
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[...] Food Australia has now launched a public campaign to allow raw milk cheese to be made in [...]
[...] Give Aussie Cheese a Chance Last month Slow Food International President (and founder) Carlo Petrini told a captivated audience at The Sydney Opera House: “We must allow Australian cheesemakers to make their cheese with raw milk. When you pasteurise milk you deprive it of its soul.” We already allow raw milk hard cheeses in from France and Italy, so it hardly seems fair that our own artisan cheesemakers are handicapped by not being allowed to make Australian cheese from raw Australian milk. Slow Food Australia will be petitioning the House of Representatives, but they need your help (and signature) to give Aussie cheesemakers a chance: http://slowfoodaustralia.com.au/projects/australia/raw-milk-cheese/ [...]
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raw milk chese rocks
Down with the food Nazis! Up with raw milk cheese!
Smoking is OK, but raw milk cheese very dangerous???????
I want to have a supply of raw milk. I live in Cairns. email me here: http://scr.im/lexmo
With the constraints that we have on all food products in Australia it makes you wonder why the rate of all types of cancer is increasing …if we go back to nature and stop interfering with food to make it “safe” maybe we could get this anomally back on an even keel…
I’ve raised 6 children on raw milk as a NZ dairy farmer, never been healthier. Our food is filled with chemicals, genetically engineered,etc. I want the choice of having all food types, including dairy ‘une natural’ as God made it, which is the best for our bodies. We should be allowed to have ‘free choice’ just like those who stand outside a hospital with tubes in their noses and arms and a cigarette in their mouths- they seem to have free choice!! at the taxpayers expense having their medical bills covered, yet filling their bodies with chemicals, that seems acceptable!!!
Raw milk and food is life-saving.. Keep learning, everyone, and share the knowledge, because the life you save may be your politician’s -and that could make all the difference
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Do your research people. I nearly died from raw milk off a farm in NZ. I contracted camplylobactor.
Fine have raw milk and cheese, but there should be massive warning labels and children should definitely not go near it.
Raw milk disease outbreaks and deaths used to be common place, pasteurisation has virtually eliminated these forms of disease and death. I’m not saying totally ban it, but there should be warnings, I will never drink raw milk ever again.
There will always be anecdotal evidence such as farmers saying they’ve drank raw for years, but the risks are there, and death can happen especially to the young and old….
My mum nearly died from food poisoning after eating fish from a top restaurant!! Remember how a few years ago, many people died after eating contaminated sausage meat produced in the factory of a well known and supposedly reputable sausage meat producer!! I and my 7 siblings and 4 generations of ancestors were raised on a farm, consuming raw milk, raw cream and fresh grown fruit and vegetables without suffering any ill effects – actually we were never so healthy as back then. We used to place a cup or glass beneath the cow’s udder, or under the tap as the milk and cream was running into the milk or cream cans (not the little “tin cans” modern kids see in supermarkets today). There’s risk anywhere if providers, and consumers, don’t use safe standards, or are exposed to unhygienic practices. I would much rather consume raw milk than the watery, processed ‘substitute for milk’ that is forced upon consumers now. When I left the farm to go to town to work, I quickly went from happily consuming 3 pints of raw milk a day, to being unable to consume more than 2 cups of pasteurised milk a day, lest I became ill. I also got dizzy every time I drank the town water!!
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