Homogenized Planet.

• Author: Paik, E. Koohan
• Position: Standards in the cheese industry

Cheese vs. Cheesefood, and the dilemma of global standards

Twenty years ago, while living on Guam, I was befriended by Heiko, an amicable scavenger who always knew where to forage for the tastiest mangoes, or where you could get the cheapest cigarettes. He came pounding on my door one afternoon. "Hey, Koohan! Let's go get our cheese!" The U.S. Navy had had another overrun of the stuff, and was handing it out to anyone who showed up outside the base PX.

Heiko led me to a parking lot paved in coral limestone that baked in the sun. In the distance, a shipping container was parked beside some scraggly coconut palms and a nondescript, typhoon-proof, cinder block building. A throng of cheering civilians clustered around one end of the container.

Like firefighters passing along pails of water, soldiers in fatigues stood inside the container tossing down five-pound boxes of mass-produced processed American cheese. One by one, they pulled the bricks from a monolith of dairy masonry that filled the container. We held our hands high to receive our share of manna, payoff for having hosted the military presence and all that came with it--B-52 headquartering, nuclear warhead storage, and confiscation of a third of the island. I'd heard of beads, stones, paper, and shells used as currency, but never bad cheese.

Heiko ran back grinning, holding his block of cheese in the air as if scoring a touchdown.

Ever since that moment, the five-pound brick of military-issue American cheese has loomed large in my personal mythology as the quintessential icon of colonization. The legacy of American paternalism is one thing, but the fact that we had sold ourselves so readily for as little as unlimited Spain, powdered milk, and processed cheese sets my teeth on edge. The unsavory dynamic between benevolent occupier and obsequious occupied may have been less painful had the soldiers been instead passing out wheels of Epoisses, or Roquefort.

There's a reason why the cheese we were given was distinguished more by geometry than flavor. It had been manufactured for maximum shelf life. Back during World War II, when the United States served as breadbasket to the Allies, the priority in food production was that it should withstand long-distance travel. The answer was pasteurized, processed cheese--made by heating natural cheeses to a liquid and adding emulsifiers and preservatives before reshaping it into a brick whose shelf life was positively Faustian. Needless to say, soft European-style and farmstead cheeses, many of which are not pasteurized (and which therefore contain a spectrum of bacteria), would never have survived the trip across the Pacific, let alone the tropical sun.

Now that globalization has emerged as the turbocharged reincarnation of colonization, industrial cheese again rears its yellow head. In this round of history, it stars as the edible manifestation of global monoculture. It is the easiest cheese for the few mega-corporations to produce, sell, and distribute across the planet, even at the expense of the gustatory pleasure of millions.

Leave it to Italain-style revelry to defy the cultural homogeneity that looms over the new century. Cheeseart 2000, a celebration of artisan cheesemaking, was held last May in the Sicilian town of Ragusa Ibla. The honeyed-stone village, clinging in tiers to the side of an anise-scented mountain, was transformed into an exposition of dairy rarities from Cypress, Italy, France, Spain, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece, and beyond. At each gargoyled turn spiraling up to Ragusa's summit, another tray of tidbits appeared, to challenge the limits of cheese diversity and human digestion. The University of Ragusa, overlooking a fertile valley, was devoting itself to a series of lectures on everything from flavor chemistry to grazing ecosystems, and from lost cheeses to genetically engineered gouda (or, rather, gouda bacteria). Tastings were held in a monastery, in an ancient stone wine cellar, and in the city's most flocked and tapestried restaurants. And there was the Palio di Maiorchino, a seventh-century Sicilian game that involves rolling a 22-pound wheel of Maiorchino throughout the winding alleys of the town.

The festival was organized by the Consorzio Ricerca Filiera Lattiero-Casearia, a team of 60 experts-breeders, agronomists, forage specialists, microbiologists, milk analysis technicians, and aroma researchers-dedicated to protecting Italian artisan cheeses. The team has two goals, the first of which is to document the characteristics of DOP, or Denominazione di Origine Protetta (Denomination of Protected Origin) cheeses and canonize them as "national treasures," thus protecting them from the standardizing effects of global processing regulations. The second goal is to educate consumers on the economic, epicurean, and historical implications of cheesemaking.

In the United States, the most immediately threatening aspect of streamlining world dairy production is the possibility of mandatory pasteurization for both domestic and imported cheeses. This would mean the disappearance of such raw-milk stalwarts as Parmigiano-Reggiano, Brie de Meaux, and Gruyere.

Pasteurization, the heating of milk for the purpose of killing nearly all microorganisms, truncates otherwise infinite possibilities for flavor and texture. Cheese artisans believe that with cheese, as with wine, quality results from skilled manipulation of bacteria, through temperature, timing, and aging. Without bacteria, they believe, certain cheeses become as lifeless and bland as "near beer." Although Americans (who at one time pasteurized all California wines) tend to feel safer with this "sterile" approach, the specter of mandatory pasteurization has farmstead cheesemakers up in arms.

In Europe, many artisan cheeses have already been lost, either through the inability of rural producers to meet new hygiene standards or through the failure of rare cheeses to compete in a world market where transportability, shelf life, and fast production reign supreme. For example, British health authorities have virtually declared war on unpasteurized cheeses. Humphrey Errington, maker of a raw-milk blue cheese, Lanark Blue, was put out of business when his cheese was taken off the market in the early 1990s. After spending [pound]200,000 ($292,000) and 13 long months in court, Errington proved that Lanark Blue was not dangerous. Even though he lost his livelihood, he chose not to join the many other cheesemakers who have quietly capitulated to official pressure. Many Europeans...