On Food and Cooking

that soft cheeses made with raw milk are
essentially contraband in the United States.
The World Health Organization has
considered recommending a complete ban on
the production of raw-milk cheeses.
Of course until barely a century ago, nearly
all cheeses were made in small batches with
raw milk, fresh from the udders of small herds
whose health was more easily monitored. And
French, Swiss, and Italian regulations actually
forbid the use of pasteurized milk for the
traditional production of a number of the
world’s greatest cheeses, including Brie,
Camembert, Comté, Emmental, Gruyère, and
Parmesan. The reason is that pasteurization
kills useful milk bacteria, and inactivates
many of the milk’s own enzymes. It thus
eliminates two of the four or five sources of
flavor development during ripening, and
prevents traditional cheeses from living up to
their own standards of excellence.
Pasteurization is no guarantee of safety,