Don't cut the cheese.

• Author: Watson, Julia
• Position: Outmaneuvering Terror - Bioterrorism regulations effect import of cheese to the United States

ONE OF THE world's great sensual experiences, exulted in daily across Europe, is illegal in the United States. That bite you may be about to take into an unctuous and intense young French raw milk cheese oozing off the edges of a chewy chunk of bread is against the law.

No raw milk cheese aged for less than sixty days may be imported into this country, nor sold in this country by local cheesemakers. So say the regulations of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in force for the past half-century. Yet since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Americans began showing an interest in proper cheese, there hasn't been much difficulty in buying younger raw milk cheese treasures from France, England and Italy in American specialty food stores. Cheeses were sent without fanfare by FedEx direct to cheesemongers. But now the U.S. Bioterrorism Act (enacted in December 2003), which requires advance identifying paperwork for the import of all consumer goods, is likely to make it impossible any longer to slip these heavenly gems through the cracks.

And it doesn't stop there: age is no longer the only issue. The FDA is also considering mandating pasteurization of all cheeses, regardless of origin or age. This would be damaging enough to foreign exporters for a market as large as America. But now the regulations may go global. As a result of a proposal by the United States, the World Health Organization (WHO) is agitating to ban the sale by member-countries of any raw milk cheeses for trade to any country. If fully realized, the cumulative effect of these developments would be a death sentence on the international cheese industry.

THE BATTLE for imported cheeses and American-made artisan cheeses alike has become "pasteurized" versus "raw." The National Cheese Institute, the ninety-member American dairy industry association which together accounts for approximately 80 percent of the natural cheese, processed cheese and cheese products manufactured in the United States, is recommending mandatory pasteurization for all cheese milk. Artisan cheesemakers, usually small mom-and-pop entrepreneurs, are under the impression that the option to use raw milk is a campaign already fought and won in their favor. Not so fast. According to John Sheehan--director for the Division of Dairy and Egg Safety within the Office of Plant and Dairy Foods, part of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition--the FDA is "currently investigating all raw milk cheeses. Evaluation is under way right now; it's a priority this year. It's going to be comprehensive."

It could mean good-bye to those remarkable and, in many cases, internationally award-winning raw milk American artisan cheeses, for which the FDA previously felt that the sixty-day age minimum was adequate to protect the American consumer. Now they might also have to be pasteurized. Goodbye, too, to imported raw milk classics like Roquefort and Emmentaler, cook's staples Parmigiano-Reggiano and Gruyere, and essential standby Cheddar.

If you call the Fromegerie P. Jacquin in La Vernelle in France to speak to cheesemaker Pascal Jacquin, it's not "La Vie en Rose" that plays in your ear while you wait, but Pink Floyd's rebellious 1979 song "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2": "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control." Just after Christmas, a consignment of his underage award-winning goat cheeses was turned back to France. And say goodbye to Vacherin Mont d'Or, considered by many the most majestic of all cheeses. Under the new law, it will not be found in the United States again. Nor will the youthful Reblochon, Camembert de Normandie, Monsieur Jacquin's Selles sur Cher, Ste. Maure de Touraine, and young Valencay, and dozens of others from Europe. Rather than compromise the quality of his fresh young goat cheeses for markets elsewhere, Monsieur Jacquin is withdrawing them from American sale and instead creating for special U.S. export a pasteurized cheese he is calling "Rond Tradition." The real issue, however, is that it could become the only cheese he is allowed to export, if the WHO has its way.

Passionate cheese lovers and cheesemakers alike argue that...