Felony cheese-making... seriously

In California, where marijuana is sold in vending machines, a man and woman were arrested for making at home and selling, in an outdoor market, cheese. The female half of this team, the one who dropped the rennet in the milk, was charged with “felony cheese-making.”

We understand the importance of protecting the public from the awful threat of unlicensed cheese-makers, but a felony?

I have often felt that the Food and Drug Administration, as well as their counterparts at the state level, are a bit suspect. They seem inclined to cater to mega-businesses. Restrictions placed on cheese-making keep you buying from Kraft. Medications not marketed by major US pharmaceuticals have a tough time getting approval. Government agencies pretty much regulated the small-town meat locker out of business. It’s illegal to butcher your own chicken in much of New Jersey, and even in Iowa you might be surprised at what can not be sold at the farmer’s market. All in the name of safe food—but what do they let the big boys get away with?

The FDA is the agency that establishes the amount of rat poo permitted in breakfast cereal, and the number is not zero.

Let us visit the FDA’s official handbook on what they call “food defect action levels,” a term defined as being “maximum levels of natural or unavoidable defects in food for human use.”

Their list is alphabetical, so we’ll start with commercially processed apple butter. The “defect action level” for apple butter coming out of the plant is “4 or more rodent hairs per 100 grams,” or “5 or more whole or equivalent insects (not counting mites, aphids, thrips or scale insects) per 100 grams.”

Chocolate is allowed 59 insect fragments per 100 grams, but only 1 rodent hair. Name brand canned sweet corn isn’t to have more than 2 corn borers or corn ear worms that are more than 3mm long, and is considered adulterated if the aggregate length of skins, larva and other inspect parts exceeds 12 mm in 24 pounds. Cornmeal has allowable limits of 1 whole insect per 50 grams, 25 insect fragments per 25 grams, or 1 rodent excreta fragment or 1 rodent hair per sample.

There is an acceptable level for maggots in mushrooms. Wheat for our breakfast cereal is allowed 9 mg of “rodent excreta pellet fragments” per kg. Pepper can have up to 475 insect fragments per 50 grams and 1 mg of excreta per pound. Canned tomato juice gets by with 10 fly eggs for each 100 grams, or 5 fly eggs and 1 maggot, or 2 maggots.

The list goes on. FDA assures us most food does not reach unacceptable levels, and that these “defects” are not harmful. I believe them. They’ve been allowing it for decades and we survive. But given their standards for commercially processed food I’m willing, from time to time, to risk the outdoor market and home-made cheese.

Roy Marshall is a local historian. E-mail him at news@redoakexpress.com.