six impossible things before breakfast 135Pasteurization requires three pieces of equipment: a steel pot, a heat
source, and a thermometer that goes up to 145°F. Add to this list, I sup-
pose, the brainpower to read a thermometer. I’ve done it many times with-
out benefit of extra driveways and employee lockers, little knowing I was
a danger to the public. In fact, later on when I went poking into these
codes, I learned I might stand in violation of Virginia State Law 2VAC5-
531-70 just by making cheese for my own consumption. It takes imagina-
tion to see how some of these rules affect consumer safety. Many other
raw food products—notably poultry from CAFOs—typically carry a much
higher threat to human health in terms of pathogen load, and yet the gov-
ernment trusts us to render it safe in our own humble kitchens. But it’s
easy to see how impossibly strict milk rules might gratify industry lobby-
ists, by eliminating competition from family producers.
Ricki was sympathetic to that position, having traveled the world and
seen a lot of people working without major milking- room specs. In Greece,
for example, she watched shepherds make cheese in a cinderblock shed
right after they milked, making feta over a fire, pouring out the whey over
the stone floor to wash it. The specific bacteria that thrived there created
a good environment for making the cheese, while crowding out other, po-
tentially harmful microorganisms. French winemakers apply the same
principle when using their grapes’ leftover yeasty pulp as compost in their
vineyards. Over the centuries, whole valleys become infused with the
right microbes to make the wine ferment properly and create its fl avorful
terroir.
Many of our most useful foods—yogurt, wine, bread, and cheese—are
products of controlled microbe growth. We may not like thinking about it,
but germs crawl eternally over every speck of our planet. Our own bodies
are bacterial condos, with established relationships between the upstairs
and downstairs neighbors. Without these regular residents, our guts are
easily taken over by less congenial newcomers looking for low- rent space.
What keeps us healthy is an informed coexistence with microbes, rather
than the micro- genocide that seems to be the rage lately. Germophobic
parents can now buy kids’ dinnerware, placemats, even clothing imbed-
ded with antimicrobial chemicals. Anything that will stand still, if we
mean to eat it, we shoot full of antibiotics. And yet, more than 5,000