International Raw Milk Cheese Appreciation Day is Saturday, October 19. But as our former President might say, “So what?” If nothing else, the occasion is a reminder that the freedom to make and sell raw-milk cheese is not guaranteed. This election year, especially, we’re hyper-aware that laws can change and restrict or retract rights we’ve had forever.
I’ve been trying to get a sense of the trend line for raw-milk cheese internationally, but even without reliable data, I’m pretty certain that the category is shrinking. Slow Food’s Foundation for Biodiversity took a stab at identifying the European countries most friendly to raw-milk cheese. Although their methodology isn’t rock-solid, the results surprised me.
Domestically, we can glean some information from member surveys conducted by the American Cheese Society in 2017, 2019 and 2021. So, not exactly current but there’s no indication the downhill trend in domestic raw-milk cheese production has reversed. Jacobs & Brichford, a raw-milk farmstead producer, ceased production last year. Several Rogue Creamery cheeses—Rogue River Blue, Caveman Blue, Crater Lake Blue—that were initially raw milk no longer are. Same goes for Capriole’s Mont. St. Francis and Julianna. Roth Cheese’s Buttermilk Blue, long made from thermized milk (which the FDA considers raw), is now produced with pasteurized milk unless it’s destined for extra aging. Vermont’s Von Trapp Farmstead abandoned raw milk for its lovely Oma, and Wisconsin’s Alpinage Cheese is planning to transition its acclaimed Mount Raclette to pasteurized milk early next year.
“They have recalls all the time in France, and I can’t afford to be in that position,” says Alpinage cheesemaker and co-owner Orphee Paillotin, who is French. “When you run a business and can mitigate a risk, you try to mitigate the risk.” Paillotin says that test batches of Mount Raclette made with pasteurized milk were “actually better in terms of quality and consistency.”
Alll raw: (l to r) Ur-Eiche, Emmentaler AOP, Bleu de Combremont, Le Gruyère AOP
ACS members are largely specialty cheese producers so raw milk use probably skews high. If we’re talking about all domestic cheese production, certainly the percentage made with raw milk is in the low single digits—maybe even under one percent. France is thought to be around 16 percent; Switzerland is likely higher, given that its top-selling cheese, Gruyère, has to be made with raw milk. I have seen estimates for other countries, but they vary so widely I distrust them.
Slow Food took an interesting approach to capturing the importance of raw-milk cheese in Europe by looking at the regulations behind the individual PDOs (protected designation of origin). Many cheeses don’t have a PDO, but the most important ones typically do, and each PDO specifies whether raw milk is required, prohibited or optional.
Here’s what Slow Food found:
So which EU country is the “most friendly” to raw-milk cheese—as determined by the percentage of PDOs that require raw milk?
The answer is Portugal, where 100 percent of the PDO cheeses require raw milk. France and Italy are next if you eliminate countries, like Austria, that have few PDOs.
Switzerland is not in the European Union, so Swiss cheeses don’t have PDOs. But they do have AOPs (appellation d’origine protégée) and all 12 Swiss AOP cheeses are made with either raw or thermized milk. For 10 out of 12, raw milk is a must.
Joe Salonia, the U. S. sales rep for the superb Swiss cheeses from Gourmino, once explained to me that the cheesemakers he represents view pasteurizing milk as a risk. “Why would you do that?” said Salonia. “Why would you hurt the most precious part of your milk?”
My sense is that Americans are closer to the British than to the French on these matters. When Stilton producers changed the regulations in 1996 to require pasteurized milk, the British did not revolt. On the other side of the Chunnel, when large Camembert producers proposed 15 years ago to loosen the requirements for Camembert de Normandie—including allowing pasteurized milk—well, that war is still being fought. For now, Camembert de Normandie remains a raw-milk cheese.
If you’d like to celebrate raw-milk cheeses on October 19, I’m sure your local cheesemonger would be delighted to recommend a few selections. Here’s the all-American raw-milk cheese roster I assembled last fall although, as mentioned, we’ve lost a few since then.