I meant to post on this some time ago, but it slipped through the cracks. Bureaucratic health fascism is currently stifling Mauritanian herders' livelihood and denying you and me the pleasure of Mauritanian camel cheese. These poor fellows are hoping to find a lucrative market in the E.U., despite the fact that the soulless bastards currently running the show are trying to regulate their own European cheeses into sanitized oblivion. Don't believe me?
Before the EU regulations were created there were some 15 000 so-called «Specialist» or «artisan» cheese makers in the UK. As of April 1999, there are only 300, down from 2 000 a year before.
There do remain signs of lingering sanity:
European laws which insisted that cucumbers and bananas could not be excessively curved and had to be of a certain shape were ruled "unenforceable" by the High Court yesterday.
But for how long? Many thanks to those who are fighting the good fight.
Of course, the situation on this side of the pond is just as bad. My own encounters with our smothering angels of hygiene have been consistantly exasperating. As my summer livelihood requires, I am a licensed food handler in the state of Utah. For years the classes I was forced to attend were taught by a loathsome warthog of a woman, who for the duration of her lecture would constantly scratch, claw, and abuse her arms, neck and scalp. Every rafting company in town independantly christened her the 'Itchy-Scratchy Lady'. My favorite part of her courses was always her explanation of why Utah has the highest rates of several communicable diseases in the nation. "We're a tourist state," she'd say. "We have tourists from Europe, and England, and China, and even some [and here her voice grew conspiritorial, as though only she in all the world had the strength of purpose to reveal such an unwelcome secret] from Africa." I suppose the self-evident fact that the state is teeming with families whose two-digit numbers of children stick their pestiferous little trotters into everything is not a political winner in Utah.
All the people I've met in the public health field are perfect illustrations of the "only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" principle. Their professional obsession drives them to distrust all food everywhere, and they forget that some of us still eat things because we like them. Itchy-Scratchy, when asked what local restaurants are good, instantly admits that she never eats out at all. I can't fathom how these people reconcile their world views with the fact that folks who eat like I do are still alive and kicking, and regularly survive infancy. So let's pour as much scorn as possible on them, eat Mauritanian camel cheese and stranger things, and read and support Slow Food's Manifesto in defense of Raw-milk Cheese.
"You can help this cause by sending the following message “I also eat raw-milk cheese” to the e-mail address rawmilk@slowfood.com"
