Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading a Congressional campaign to overturn a new FDA rule that could lead to many raw milk cheese producers being put out of business.
In the 11 long years it’s taken the FDA’s dairy chief, John Sheehan, to concoct a program to rid the U.S. of raw milk cheese, the product has become extremely popular around the country. So popular that it is an industry unto itself in a number of states, like Oregon, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. Senators and representatives of those states are very upset that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is close to adopting new regulations to put a clamp on raw milk cheese production, and could well put small cheese producers out of business, and hurt their states’ economies.
Basically, what the FDA has done in recent weeks is establish a new standard for raw milk cheese that severely limits the amount of benign E.coli that is naturally occurring in many such cheeses.
According to a joint letter from nine senators and fifteen representatives, including Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, to deputy FDA commissioner Michael Taylor, “The new standard will severely limit the production of raw milk cheeses across the country. Such a drastic step would only be justified were these cheeses presenting a demonstrable public health risk, which, to date, we have not seen evidence of.” They cite “leading food safety scientists” who say that monitoring such E.coli “has no value in mitigating the risk of raw milk cheese pathogens of greatest concern.”
The FDA campaign, despite a near-absence of serious illnesses from such cheese, is something I’ve warned about repeatedly in recent years as the FDA has carried out its witch hunt to effectively ban raw milk cheese, apparently because it has become significant competition to the multibillion-dollar established pasteurized cheese industry. John Sheehan, the leader of the 11-year campaign to regulate raw milk cheese out of existence, was a Quality Control Manager for pizza cheese maker Leprino Foods Co. prior to joining the FDA.
A few raw milk cheese producers have expressed similar concern about the FDA’s campaign. The head of Jasper Hill cheese, Mateo Kehler, said recently in a letter to the FDA: “Over the past 10 years Jasper Hill has been a leader in a quickly growing segment of the dairy industry that represents hundreds of millions of dollars of potential growth for domestic processors over the next decade. Jasper Hill is an innovator dedicated to the production of safe cheese and provides operational and financial services to a network of award winning artisan cheesemakers across northern Vermont and New Hampshire. The FDA policy on non-toxigenic E.coli outlined in the current CPG does not correlate with any known safety benefit, nor is it necessarily related to insanitary conditions or filth.”
The senators and representatives explain further in their letter to Taylor: “As you know, cheese production is an important, and growing, component of our nation’s value-added agricultural economy. It is an economic driver in rural areas across the country, producing good jobs, internationally-recognized brands, and award-winning cheeses….The new FDA standard for non-toxigenic E.coli levels in raw milk cheeses threatens to halt the growth of the raw milk cheese industry. As you know, FDA has reduced the amount of allowable non-toxigenic E.coli in cheeses from 10,000 most probable number (MPN)/gram in 2009 to 10 MPN/gram under the new standard. While we understand a more stringent standard may be appropriate for cheese made from pasteurized or heat-treated milk, the application of new E.coli standards to raw milk cheeses is inconsistent with internationally-recognized microbiological guidance established by the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF).”
The political representatives conclude with a number of questions to the FDA: “Why did the FDA feel a more stringent E.coli standard for raw milk cheese was warranted? What evidence exists to demonstrate that raw milk cheeses produced under current practices place public health at risk?”
Good questions. Unfortunately, the FDA will come back with mumbo jumbo answers and data implying that raw milk cheese is potentially dangerous. Hopefully, the politicians will have experts available to examine the FDA’s answers closely and carefully. If they don’t, then the FDA’s long plotting against raw milk cheese may well achieve its original goal.
The FDA has lost its way. Where is the science or basis for this change? When in the last four years there have been many deaths from pasteurized cheeses and none from raw.
Mark my words…the FDA may just have stepped into a mine field. Congressmen like good food and just like oysters … Congress will just tell the FDA through a new law… To take their new unfounded standards and shove them!! I am so sick and tired of Sherhan and Taylor… They are corrupt.
I’m with you 1000%.
There is no science or basis. Sheehan is a patent attorney who worked for a pizza cheese company, and Mike Taylor is an attorney formerly worked at Monsanto.
They clearly don’t know anything about cuisine, traditional foods, and agriculture.
Here’s from the FDA website on Taylor:Mr. Taylor began his career as a staff attorney at FDA, holding various positions including deputy commissioner for policy. He was involved in issuing regulations to address seafood safety and in carrying out nutrition labeling requirements.
Other positions held by Mr. Taylor include senior fellow, Resources for the Future; professor, School of Medicine, University of Maryland; partner, King & Spalding law firm; and vice president for public policy, Monsanto Company.
Unless there are some republican reps from those States I don’t see any chance of reining in those two goons.
“lost its way”? It’s way has always been the revolving door between government and big food/big ag/big pharma where the fox perpetually guards the hen house. There is nothing new under the sun here, including corruption. All of us who love our liberty and our real food need to make a big Limburger-style stink about it and let it be known we will age our cheese and eat it, too!
Ya it hasn’t lost its way, its doing the same thing it ever did. It is not there to protect consumers, but big industry.
When it comes to real food from small producers we never needed the FDA and never will. Because they suppress artisan food in favor of industrial food they are a net negative on food safety.
It would appear to me that this creates a cause for all raw cheese makers. Time to lobby congress and get Taylor and Sheehan fired.
Sheehan and Taylor are as brain dead as the Dietary Guidelines committee-they received 29,000 comments this year on their stupidity, as opposed to only 2,000 in 2010. So yes, its time for all of us to come to the aid of the party, to flood our Congress-critters with our strenuous objections to this underhanded promotion of the dead-milk dairy industry.
If this raw cheese standard stands…states could choose to ignor it. But that would mean that ” raw cheese” could then be “banned in interstate commerce just like raw milk”.
This is a rare time in recent history where the FDA has Acted on pure political bs verses true science or illness data. It is so apparent that action against the masters at the FDA could be possible. How about congressional hearings on this matter and drag Sheehan to capital hill to answer. He can’t.
He must go!! Taylor must go!!
The only cheese makers in the USA that could pass this crazy standard of 10 Coliform are RAWMI Listed producers. We do this all the time… But at great expense!!! Raw cheese would also be banned from France? Trade agreements could also be triggered.
FDA has really screwed this one up!!! Time to make them pay by demanding the resignations of two idiots.
It is increasingly clear that the court of public opinion can turn the tide on government actions, including in a courtroom. We’ve all seen it happen. Sharing, writing, talking about what’s happening is the single most effective step we can take to push back against the FDA (and other alphabets). Cockroaches like to do their dirty work in the dark. So we shine a light on them. They HATE that and often scurry back to their dark holes to scheme.
Sheehan isn’t a doctor or a scientist. David had to dig to find his background: http://davidgumpert.com/when-you-penetrate-john-sheehans-veil-of-secrecy-you-find-a-pizza-cheese-quality-control-guy-running-fdas-war-on-raw-milk-and-turning-all-disclosure-into-struggle. This shouldn’t have been that hard.
My opinion on Sheehan, taking what I know about him into consideration, is that he is a liar and a tool for Big Dairy. Here’s a little evidence: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/UCM185696.pdf. To me, that is raw evil.
A couple of quick e. coli factoids: e. coli is a bacterium (not a parasite) that lives in your intestines… you can’t get rid of it and you shouldn’t try. It’s a good baseline indicator of your health: if you discover via testing that you have too little or too much e. coli, it means there’s an imbalance somewhere. You need to find that imbalance before it turns into disease.
Also, when your gut is healthy, e. coli is kept down to manageable numbers by your good bacteria. The FDA has done a good job of keeping up the skeer on e. coli. Don’t let them get away with it.
Listeria is another bacterium that gets the skeer treatment. I wrote an article about it here: http://www.kyfreepress.com/2013/02/listeria-faqs/.
We need to tell these self-righteous FDA wonks to lay off. I’m so over it.
Sheehan may actually have done the american public and the raw milk/cheese producers a huge favor and he doesn’t even know it. We may be thanking him in the days/years to come. IF THE POLITICAL MACHINE is finally taking notice of the raw cheese issues, maybe they will also take a real close look at what’s been happening for the past 15-20 years with raw milk. Politicians do tend to scramble for position when money is involved. 😉 And this issue involves both money and State commerce – that might really draw some good attention. A few (like Ron Paul and Thomas Massie and a couple of others) have tried in years past, but if this gets a few more to come on board, all the better for the people.
It won’t matter if Sheehan and/or Taylor are replaced. There are others willing to take their place who are just as bad. What should be looked at is the fact that it took Sheehan 11 years to accomplish anything, if he actually has. :seemyeyesrolling:
Kind of amazing what those FDA blokes are up to.
Its a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie washed down with a Pepsi is considered safe, yet super nutritious raw cheeses and milk are considered a threat to society. Our great great grandparents are all rolling over in their graves…
The Commissioner of the FDA should be be in jail for approving high profit, poison drugs that murder over 100,000 people each year for the payola that greases their palm. Payola from the Pharmaceuticals. Of course they want to get rid of healthy foods as it would cut into the profits from the Pharmaceuticals and poison food processors. Just ask your Senator or Representative today how many people have they help poison and murdered today just to get their palms grease with the Payola from the Profits?
REGULATORY CAPTURE, look no further than Monsanto’s man Michael Taylor..
I just realized Michael Taylor knows something about the science we haven’t considered. Disease is all about terrain and the new GMO crops add an antibiotic resistant gene that can horizontally transfer into other organisms. If we have 1 tiny normally not harmful e-coli in a raw cheese eaten by a GMO infected creature the genes could cross pollinate to produce a super e-coli. Then your harmless bacteria turns into a killer because of the antibiotic resistant gene splicing technology inserted into every body’s digestive tract. Now that GMO’s are everywhere and approved real biologically active foods really are dangerous. They could trigger the whole death of humanity by developing with GMO’s and blowing new exotic superbugs across the whole food supply..! Gmo gun triggered by close contact with environment, set to explode in 5 year.
Sheehan is full of Shee-it. His co-conspirator at the FDA is Monica Metz, another drone who was originally with Leprino Foods prior to her FDA stint. You may recall that she is the idiot who issued a statement in the summer of 2014 that aging cheese on wood was going to be banned. That little stunt was so ridiculous that even the mainstream media called her and the FDA out on that one. Who is Leprino Foods? They are probably the largest commodity maker of mozerella cheese in the world. White looking liquid (loosely identified as milk) goes into one door of their manufacturing facility and extruded “mozerella” cheese comes out the other end. They made the national news a year or so ago when an outfit called “Mercy for Animals” secretly filmed a dairy in New Mexico that sold milk to Leprino. The film is very hard to watch because you get an inside view on how a CAFO commodity dairy really operates. The treatment of the animals is atrocious. Of course, Leprino Foods, who does all it can do to operate in the dark as much as it can, tried to distance itself from this particular dairy by “Firing” the dairy. Of course, most likely, this dairy changed its name and started right back up selling to Leprino. By the way, Leprino will NOT let you tour their plant, claiming that their manufacturing process is proprietary and they don’t want someone stealing their process. More likely, just like the big 10,000 cow plus dairies, they just don’t want you to see how it’s really done at that scale. To top it off, the government subsidizes these operations. Sad but true.
Hey Government…GET OUT OF MY CHEESE!!
Who controls the FDA? Whoever it is, they care more for money,Than what consumers demand and feel what is healthy for them!