Submitted via IRC for takyon
After years of lobbying, industrial producers are now allowed to make camembert with pasteurised milk. As a result, one of France's beloved cheeses may be disappearing – for good.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180618-the-end-to-a-french-cheese-tradition
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The End to a French Cheese Tradition?
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:17PM (2 children)
...says no!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:30AM (1 child)
Exactly. Where else would we get our cheese-eating surrender monkeys from if there was no more cheese?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday June 27 2018, @08:18AM
Maybe the "monkeys" are surrendering their act of eating cheese?
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:20PM (13 children)
I'm reading the article and trying vainly to understand how allowing product B is going to end product A. It sounds so long and convoluted as people tend to be when they try to explain why other people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want to do with their own property.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:21PM (4 children)
I hate this patronizing attitude. If I as a consumer want to switch to a more cheaply made product I'm not lost. You just wish I was forced to pick you out of having no other alternative.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:28PM (3 children)
You were always allowed to choose the cheaper product. All that changed is that now the cheaper product may be sold under the same name as the more expensive product.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:36PM (2 children)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:51PM (1 child)
They used to have precisely that in the different label they used. Now they changed the meaning of the label to include different standards.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:40PM
Pasteurized-milk camembert tastes smells strongly of ammonia. I expect that most French people will not want to spend money on that, given the breadth of choices.
For export (like to the US), people with no choice will just get the inferior product with the known name.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:50PM (4 children)
Basically, because the raw milk process is more temperamental and thus more expensive/labor intensive. Before, producers who used this traditional method could label their cheeses in a different way, which allowed consumers to understand the difference in production, and thus perhaps understand the reason for the higher price.
Exactly where was this? Who was not "allowed to do what they want to do with their own property"??
The industrial producers who used pasteurized milk were certainly able to make cheese with it. And they were able to sell it. The only thing that was restricted was what they were legally able to label it as. That's not about an individual's rights to do what they want -- that's about a community's rights to know what they're buying in the public marketplace.
Personally, I find some of these "source of food/production" labels to be silly too. But if a local community/country chooses to regulate who can use said labels, I don't have a problem with it. I can certainly choose to buy "camembert" cheese made in Canada if I like, as TFA notes. As a consumer, I still get all the choices -- French cheese that's pasteurized, French cheese that's unpasteurized, Canadian cheese, etc. It's just about who is allowed to claim their cheese is made in the "traditional" manner.
For example, pizza napoletana has all sorts of regulations governing its proper manufacture if you want to claim that you're making "true" Neapolitan pizza. Restrictions governing ingredients, oven temperature (both air and oven floor), maximum time for bake, etc. The process creates a unique product, one which I happen to like, and which I really enjoyed while visiting Naples.
Given the propensity for Italian businesses to try to "relieve" tourists of their money wherever possible, it's nice that one can actually see whether a particular eatery is registered and thus producing pizza in the traditional manner. You can certainly choose to eat at a different pizzeria that produces a different style of pizza if you like. It might be cheaper. It's up to you. The label is just providing information about the product.
In essence, the pasteurized cheese producers here wanted permission from a governing body to use a special certified label on their product when offering it for public sale. It has to do with potential misrepresentation of a product, or the accepted definition of a product. Now the definition of the product has been changed and the information it used to convey is thus altered
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:30PM (2 children)
Their labeling machine is their own property, is it not?
Here in the glorious freepublic of ancapistan, I am free to grow my own destroying angel mushrooms in my own shit, saturate them with my own antifreeze, package them in my own shrinkwrap machine, label them "100% Authentic Camembert Cheese, Made In The Most Traditional Process" with my own labeling machine, and take them to the Free Market to sell.
The rest of you must wish you had such freedom to do as you like with your own property.
After all, if people didn't want antifreeze-laden poison mushrooms, why, they shouldn't have bought them!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:57PM
Ancapistan is BEST Libertopia!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:41PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:33AM
Thanks for the clear analysis.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:10PM (1 child)
The issue is what they're allowed to call what they make.
They've been allowed to call this mass produced cheese made from pasteurized Holstein milk as 'Camembert cheese' for a long time, yet there's a very good argument that it's not Camembert cheese at all, at most it's a cheap 'Camembert style' of cheese, but not the real thing.
In a perfect world consumers would see through such things but in the real world it does seem to cause measurable confusion, and market distortions result.
I'm not taking a side, I just don't think it's accurate to say this is about what they're allowed to make, rather than what they're allowed to call what they make.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:37PM
To be clear, according to TFA, "Camembert" cheese is now produced around the world. The particular dispute in this case is that "Camembert de Normandie" was a restricted designation which denoted specific production methods. Cheesemakers in Normandy who refused to adhere to these restrictions instead put "Fabriqué en Normandie" on their labels. Justifiably, some of the "Camembert de Normandie" cheesemakers -- only about 10% of the overall production from Normandy -- thought this was confusing to consumers, but those "in the know" still could find the kind of cheese they wanted.
The concern here was not only over pasteurization, but also over some other aspects of the cheesemaking process, and particularly the use of Normande cows, which produce a richer milk with a different flavor profile. Most of the industrial producers who use pasteurized milk also just use Holstein or other cows that are bred to produce more milk more quickly and easily. (Holstein milk, even though it's the standard in the U.S., is generally pretty bland, and has become blander over the years as Holsteins are bred to produce ridiculous quantities of milk per cow these days.)
The compromise that was made here is that the folks who manage the "Camembert de Normandie" designation wanted to preserve some of the flavor of the overall cheese that comes from their region, I guess. So, they compromised by allowing pasteurization and the use of the "Camembert de Normandie" designation as long as the dairies who use that designation agree to use Normande cows.
So, a distinctive cow breed will likely be preserved better, and perhaps the overall flavor of "camembert" coming out of Normandy will improve because of it. But some other traditional elements (the unpasteurized processing) will be lost as a required component of the "Camembert de Normandie" designation.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:41PM
I didn't take it that way. It was more about the right to use a name. Do whatever you want making cheese, but if you're going to say it's type A cheese, then it better damn well be type A cheese.
After reading the article, my take away was that the name was the objection. To use the name the milk must come from specific cows raised in a specific place, and it may not be pasteurized. That's what has changed, and as a result, the cheese itself will change. Raw milk will be used less and less as Big Ag takes over, which means that Camembert cheese will no longer be Camembert cheese. At least technically.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)
someone is allowed to make something. Perhaps youtube instruction should be criminalized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk03ja6vS58 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:40PM
They have always been allowed, what they haven't been allowed until yesterday is to call it the same name.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:46PM
This is just plainly a scam! People will think they're buying actual urea but only get fake synthesized urea!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Entropy on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:21PM (6 children)
You may or may not have tried non-pasteurised products. Try to find "fresh squeezed(aka non-pasteurised) orange juice somewhere and test the difference. Allowing pasteurised to be marketed the same as non-pasteurised basically kills the non-pasteurised product. There's a large difference product quality(taste), a large difference in product cost(price), and most consumers are not going to pour through the ingredients one by one and look to see which one is non-pasteurised. Probably someone will ask for the cheese, and they will pick it up by label not knowing the difference.
We are of course mass market forced fed that pasteurised = good, but that isn't always the case. We're doing some pretty awful things to our food supply these days. If you're never tried eggs from chickens someone has raised, or non-pasteurised orange juice(fresh squeezed) you should really give them a try. The difference is quite profound.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:52PM (3 children)
Orange juice is pasteurized mostly for longer shelf life. It's true that pasteurization can produce a significant difference in the flavor. But on an industrial scale of production, pasteurization adds a safety layer.
Milk is pasteurized because historically it was a huge disease-carrying agent (and still can be, particularly in large industrial herds where milk from thousands of cows is often intermingled during processing).
And frankly, the taste of unpasteurized milk isn't so different than pasteurized. (Note I'm talking about low-temp pasteurization; UHT pasteurization definitely alters flavor significantly.) Those who claim that they taste a significant difference often are buying their unpasteurized milk from a farm that uses better cows (often different breeds) and/or are buying unhomogenized milk too, which has a different impact and different flavor profile depending on whether you get a glass with some cream or not. Most of the raw milk afficionados are basing their arguments on misconceptions -- not that there is no difference in unpasteurized milk, but there's very little benefit compared to risk.
Unpasteurized cheese is a different case, since some cheese processing depends on those microorganisms naturally in unpasteurized milk to aid in processing and/or provide some distinct flavor elements. In some long-aged or heavily processed cheeses, the difference is generally negligible. But in "fresh" cheeses and those eaten very "young," there can be more noticeable flavor differences. And most cheese processes (though not all) tend to lower the risk of bacterial problems compared to raw milk.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:23PM (2 children)
I've never seen milk that was unpasteurized but homogenized, though I suppose it's possible to do. Raw milk means neither has been done. And yes, obviously you want to get that from a smaller farm that has good quality control, you're not going to mix the milk of 1000 cows and then sell it raw, that would be nuts.
Anytime you mix milk you increase risk of disease significantly, unless you pasteurize. So you can see how if you want the bulk econo-milk you're not going to get raw.
But in a very real sense, you don't get milk either. It just doesn't taste anything like real milk. Is it less nutritious? That I do not claim to know. But it certainly doesn't taste like milk.
I don't crave a real high fat milk so I just skim the cream off and use it for treats. If you do want a higher fat milk, though, you can stir it up, poor mans homogenization on the spot.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:06PM (1 child)
It's very difficult to do "quality control" that will catch all bad raw milk, even on smaller farms. There have been a number of outbreaks tracked by the CDC from small farms with reasonable hygiene and quality control.
Well, YMMV.
I don't claim to be a raw milk afficionado, but I've had it from at least a half-dozen different farms in my lifetime. (I grew up in an area that had a number of dairy farms and helped milk cows on one of them myself periodically when I was a kid.) Some raw milk I've had has been great -- very sweet and rich and amazing, though from a different cow breed -- while some was mediocre, some relatively flavorless and inferior to average pasteurized milk I've had (this was milk I milked out of a cow myself), and some had strong flavors (like very "grassy") that were not a net-positive.
I'd attribute a lot of the differences in flavor profile to the individual farms (e.g., cow diet and living conditions) and types of cows, as well as seasonal variation, but overall I really don't think it tastes a lot different from normal low-temp pasteurized milk (1% or skim, since as you point out, it's not generally homogenized). I've had various profiles of pasteurized milk too -- some much better than others. Certainly I'd say my raw milk experiences have had more varied tastes overall.
I tried looking around the internet for double-blind taste tests with raw milk, but couldn't really find any (except for a New Yorker article from a few years back where pasteurized homogenized was judged superior, but I don't know what the conditions of that were and it sounds like they only compared two milks -- one of which was homogenized and the other not). I suspect if the raw milk advocates actually had data supporting their "better taste" assertions in blind testing, they'd be trumpeting it from the hilltops....
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:24PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by archfeld on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:00PM (1 child)
Truly fresh squeezed OJ made from the oranges I harvest from the trees in my backyard is 'INCREDIBLY' good and direct proof of God in my opinion. Even fresh squeezed from the market is noticeably inferior but still much better than concentrated frozen orange sludge.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:08PM
Nah, I like my corn syrup packed gray fruit pulp dyed with yellow #5 thank you very much.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday June 26 2018, @07:02PM (5 children)
The block was five centimeters square by one centimeter thick. It set me back like ten bucks.
It smelled just like toe jam.
To the extent I managed to get past that toe jam it's taste was... intriguing.
But partway through Bonita begged me to stop eating eat.
Her two dogs both liked it just fine.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @07:18PM (4 children)
Dogs will eat their own vomit. Probably best to do what your woman says in that case.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:14PM (3 children)
If only that were the worst thing dogs will eat. Some dogs seem to consider their own and other dogs' faeces a special treat!
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:17PM
Pretty sure my dog found a human turd the other day and licked that shit. No more off leash hikes for you dumb mutt!!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:33PM
Cat poop too, according to a friend who has an indoor cat and indoor dog.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @07:42AM
That's "by (intelligent?) design".
There are some things that dogs need that they can only extract on the second pass.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Tuesday June 26 2018, @07:24PM (1 child)
I'm confused. Are they suddenly going to go bankrupt relabeling their product "unpasteurized camembert"? Pretty sure the sky isn't falling.
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Tuesday June 26 2018, @11:31PM
It used to be you could trust Camembert de Normandie to be made with traditional methods and ingredients. So they already added the 'de Normandie' label to differentiate it from others using different ingredients and processes. Now, some industrial producers moved to Normandie and started using the same labelling, but with different ingredients and processes.
So, now you're saying, why don't the 'good guys' just add more labelling to differentiate? "Unpasteurised Camembert de Normandie". This is a game of cat and mouse. Next thing you know, the traditional small volume producers will need to have half the production method, 'not-production' method, and ingredient list on the label. Why force them to play this game.
I suppose they could try on one of those sneaky marketing techniques that name or label their products: "Contains NO {insert big bad scary ingredient}". You look on the shelf and there is one product with this on it. So you crap your pants and assume that the other similar products must contain {big bad scary ingredient} as they don't say they don't. Guilty until proven innocent.
But, this is the opposite. They don't want to HAVE to say they don't use the nasty crap in their product, when some 'big farm' producer has decided they can play fast and loose with what methods and ingredients can be changed while still calling it the same thing.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 26 2018, @07:35PM (11 children)
I look at it from the 'dark' chocolate point of view:
dark chocolate used to not contain milk and no or little sugar.
milk chocolate contained a certain amount of milk and more sugar.
and i guess (don't know for sure) that white chocolate had a shit ton of milk and sugar in it.
Now, i have to read the back of every bar/package of 'dark' chocolate because most of the time it is really 'milk' chocolate.
"May contain milk" doesn't help when you have a lactose allergy. "May contain" means "You just lost a customer".... not fun eating chocolate and then making painful fudge into the toilet, LET ME TELL YOU!
Will they be able to hide the fact that it is made with skim milk and will taste different? Should it be Camembert-lite?
"I'm Earl Camembert, and"-- shit what was his tag line for the news? Help me Obi Wan Canadian....you're my only hope!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:18PM (6 children)
"Dark chocolate" mostly tastes disgusting: over-sweetened and not enough flavour.
You have to buy chocolate with 70% and higher cocoa solids to get anything that really testes good.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:29PM
Come on now, clearly you are ovary-acting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:46PM (3 children)
you can buy unsweetened dark chocolate. that stuff is inedible it is so bitter, so it is definitely a diminishing returns sort of thing.
At least in US, can't say I've seen any dark chocolate with milk in it, as it would be milk chocolate at that point.
At one point some of the candy companies in the US were lobbying the FDA to alter thei legal definition of chocolate to allow substitution of cocoa butter with other vegetable fats. that was shot down.
They still do this substitution, but can't call it "chocolate". Technically a Baby Ruth bar isn't covered in chocolate, but has a "chocolatey covering".
At least the chocolate ration is still 30 grams. Thanks, Big Brother. Don't let Emmanuel Goldstein control the chocolate.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:41PM
"Unsweetened dark chocolate" is Baking Chocolate. It's bitter, but is very delicious when added to things you cook. My "Coffee" in the morning 1 part unsweetened chocolate powder, 1 part French Vanilla creamer with instant coffee in it, sugar to taste, 3/4 of a glass of hot water, 1/4 glass of milk. Very delicious and not so much caffeine that it makes me mean. Unlike those 200mg capsules. The wife also like that chocolatey coffee goodness, so win/win. One might more aptly call it Caffeinated Hot Chocolate.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @11:31PM
Inedible? Far from it, unsweetened baking chocolate is quite tasty stuff. Of course it's so strong you won't get much out of it just chomping down on a mouthful, but if you peel fine shavings off and salt them, they're a delicious snack. (Or more crudely, just grab a square and nibble it over the course of an hour -- goes well with a good book.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:58AM
> can't say I've seen any dark chocolate with milk in it, as it would be milk chocolate at that point.
You just haven't read the labels. US, EU, Canada all allow milk ingredients in dark chocolate, as long as minimums of cocoa are met.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday June 26 2018, @09:34PM
If you get your "chocolate" from that brand in PA, you have never had some actual chocolate.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:45PM (2 children)
Real dark chocolate doesn't contain milk. A lot of those "may contain" labels are there, because they process X products on the same machines. Similar to the may contain tree nuts, peanuts, etc. labels. Not that they put it in there, but "cross contamination" happens.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:41AM
Citation? I've had reactions to Canadian "dark chocolate" and found it contained skim milk products, and I'm pretty sure I had the same happen after some Trader Joe's dark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:53AM
I looked it up /for/ you.
You're wrong.
There are minimum cocoa fat and/or solids standards for "chocolate" and "dark chocolate", but the EU, USA, and Canada don't have rules preventing any milk ingredients in products labelled "dark chocolate."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @06:51AM
> lactose allergy
Really? Not a casein allergy? If that's true, you're in an extreme minority. Most people who can't have milk are lactose intolerant (stop making lactase, start getting gas and the shits etc from milk) or, fewer, casein allergic.
Lactose itself is a simple sugar, it'd be pretty hard, not inconceivable, for your body to mark it as a pathogen.