Bureaucrats threaten cheese makers with blandness

Ireland's farmhouse cheeses are stunningly good. Made from unpasteurised milk, their fine flavours have taken an increasingly secure place at the table among Europe's most exquisite varieties.

But now there are fears that they could become bland, because of a decree which is supposedly in the interests of food safety.

The Department of Agriculture and Food has vigorously denied that new regulations it has introduced, prompted by an EU directive, are designed to force "raw milk" cheese-makers into pasteurising their milk.

"Any suggestion that the Department is misusing these standards to pressurise all cheese makers into pasteurising their milk is without foundation," a spokesman said.

But food connoisseur Ms Myrtle Allen is not so convinced. She said that even before the new regulations there was tremendous pressure on such cheese-makers to pasteurise.

"It's terrible. Once pasteurised they lose a great deal of flavour. They're not so stunningly good. They're good but, on the whole, much blander."

Cheese-maker Ms Veronica Steele, whose Milleens cheese won the supreme award at this year's British Cheese Awards (among several won by Irish raw milk cheese-makers), has said the regulations are not workable. On reflection, she added: "Perhaps they may be achievable, with the perfect cow, in a laboratory situation."

Ms Allen is contacting French scientists with a view to reaffirming the established expert opinion that such cheeses do not represent an undue risk - which was the verdict of independent research commissioned by the British Specialist Cheese-makers' Association.

She suspects that a lot of the regulation is aimed at facilitating world trade, "everybody thinking very big" and a new thrust to make food safe but simple and profitable.

Their products and businesses need protection, she said. "Things are being done to farmhouse food business people that they wouldn't dare do to a trade union or corporate business."

The Department said it was underpinning Ireland's worldwide reputation for good food with "safety and quality standards". The microbiological criteria to which raw milk farmhouse cheese must conform are mostly set out in an EU directive but "where it is mute, ambiguous or is considered lax, we have laid down our own standards."

Ironically, the European Commission accepts the need to protect Europe's foods of "specific origin" or "distinctive character". Hundreds of foods, including many cheeses, are protected. Ireland has not embraced this process, though a display of such products opens next week at the EU Centre in Dawson Street, Dublin.