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Tiny mites spark big battle over imports of French cheese (2013)
- numpad0 6y agoCould anyone educate me on how to dereference and unsee this article from my brain? I very much love cheeses and never noticed this ... fact.
- ReactiveJelly 6y agoReading it just makes me hungry for Daiya mac and cheese
- NullPrefix 6y agoShould have never accepted the cookies. NPR gives you text only page if you don't want tracking
- distantaidenn 6y agoDon’t look up how figs are pollinated.
- HeWhoLurksLate 6y agoIf, like me, you also don't want to find out how figs are pollinated, here's an article I didn't immediately turn around and find- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85340/fig-pollination-incredible-and-probably-results-you-eating-mummified-wasps https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85340/fig-pollination-in...
- slater 6y ago(2013)
- wazoox 6y agoIf you keep your cheese warm enough (not refrigerated for 4 to 6 hours) you can even see the mites run in your plate at times :) They're not actually microscopic, though they're really, really small. There are cheeses that gets their name (and taste) from the mites : "la tomme céronnée" is so called because it's covered with "cirons" (mites) that gives it its typical nutty taste (you're of course supposed to eat the rind, eventually after brushing off some of the dust). Another interesting thing to now is that raw milk cheeses have an intense life of their own, but they're less susceptible to host bad bugs : the existing fauna and flora keeps the nasty ones out. OTOH, a pasteurized cheese must be either almost sterile, or may rapidly host all sorts of bad microbes.
- omginternets 6y ago>eventually Fellow compatriot spotted ;) Just FYI, “eventually” != “éventuellement”. Also, do you want to tell them about Corsican cheese, or should I?
- swimfar 6y agoIn Germany there is a cheese called Milbenkäse (mite cheese) that contains live mites inside the cheese, not just on the rind. They contain hundreds of thousands of them per cheese block. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milbenk%C3%A4se https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milbenk%C3%A4se
- kergonath 6y agoAnd of course that’s nothing compared to casu marzu. Granted, they are maggots and not mites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_marzu
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoWhy stop the sale, if there are problems with allergies can't you just label the cheese "[may] contain mites" under the allergen list? Do the mites taste worse if they're dead? Seems they could be killed relatively easily by placing then in an oxygen free container for a while?
- kergonath 6y agoCheese is often a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, or collateral damage when the American government wants so show it’s not happy. One example was the banana trade wars in the 1990s, which saw things like roquefort (as well as other European food) getting banned and un-banned a couple of times. It often has not much to do with actual food safety.
- swimfar 6y agoTrue, but I doubt that banning this one very specific cheese (that is much less known than Roquefort in the US) is due to trade negotiations. Even the German mite cheese is supposedly in kind of a legal grey area in the EU.
- kergonath 6y agoYou’re right, in this instance apparently some customs agents did not like the look of one batch. My memory is a bit hazy, and finding details is difficult. The report is fantastic though, you can feel the disgust of the officer who wrote it: — The article is subject to refusal of admission pursuant to Section 801(a)(3) in that it the article appears to consist in whole or in part of a filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or be otherwise unfit for food. — https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/importrefusals/index.cfm https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/importrefusals/index.... There are actually a bunch of things that are not entirely compliant with EU regulations but get some kind of exemption because they are traditional, and usually not produced in large quantities. Sometimes they can be produced but not sold, like the casu marzu mentioned elsethread.
- robin_reala 6y agoCharles Babbage (of Analytical Engine fame) wrote an entire chapter of his sort-of-autobiography where he imagines life from the perspective of a cheesemite philosopher: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57532/57532-h/57532-h.htm#p406 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57532/57532-h/57532-h.htm#p4... (I did a production of this book as a nice epub for Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-babbage/passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-babbage/passages-f... if you want something for your reader.)
- aspenmayer 6y agoThanks for this. It’s great you did this and shared it.
- sjackso 6y agoI once bought a piece of mimollete cheese on a lark. When I ate it later that day, I was extremely impressed by the rich and nutty flavor, and wondered how I had reached adulthood without knowing about something so delicious. So I looked it up on wikipedia. And learned about the mites. When I looked closely at the rind of the the cheese I'd bought-- sure enough, it was busy with tiny, transparent crawlies. I still like mimolette, but there's something in the back of my brain that cannot forget the mites. The innocent bliss of that first experience is impossible to recapture.
- GuiA 6y agoYou have similar mites living on your face too. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/21/725087824/meet-the-mites-that-live-on-your-face https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/21/7250878...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Retric 6y agoHuman mites are up to 0.016in while cheese mites can be about twice that size 0.028in making them much easier to see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demodex_folliculorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demodex_folliculorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrophagus_casei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrophagus_casei
- sjackso 6y agoYes, illogical though it be, the fact that my eyelash dust might be motile bothers me less than seeing live arachnids in my food.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoYour face is crawling with mites. Sleep on that.
- 6y ago
- wcoenen 6y agoSounds like something that could be solved with food irradiation [1] after the cheese has ripened, to kill the mites. It's similar to pasteurization, but without any of the heat which would melt the cheese. And it's already FDA approved[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation [2] https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irradiation-what-you-need-know https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irra...
- tomxor 6y agoDoes it need to be solved? Is it an actual problem? I'm not clear what the issues is with eating them. What's the difference between mites in this cheese and bacteria in yogurt? they are both intrinsic to the process of producing respective foods.
- stevula 6y agoMany food regulations seem to be based on people’s traditional idea of cleanliness than on actual salutary benefits. I doubt hair and cockroaches are huge disease vectors but I still don’t want them in or near my food.
- serf 6y ago>I doubt hair and cockroaches are huge disease vectors cockroaches are pretty huge disease vectors. they're known to spread salmonella.
- tomxor 6y agoExcept that mites are imperceptible to eat, and very difficult to see.
- saiya-jin 6y agoYeah but if you kill the mites/worms/whatever, its still in the cheese, just dead. I would actually prefer the, you know, meaty part, to be fresh upon digestion
- pmoriarty 6y agoI wonder how the FDA feels about civet coffee.
- jungletime 6y agoMake stronger people, not weaker cheese America! The current approach of eradicating anything that may be a biological threat has resulted in isles of products made with corn and wheat substitutes, and things artificially loaded with sugar, salt, fat, and just cardboard like, spiked with chemical preservatives and flavourings. Hoards of young, obese Americans (in part because of such food policies) are locking down in their bedrooms because a virus is out to get them, that otherwise has 0.01% mortality in healthy, fit young people. You can still get lost, by only making "right" turns at every step. Work to boost your immune system, so cheese mites won't kill you. Or at least let people make a choice with how much risk they're willing to take by eating cheese, and going outside. How does it make sense, "organic" food, is the most expensive, niche, sold at Whole foods, in the US. When in other counties its the cheapest standard diet.
- jccooper 6y agoI had to find out what happened. Apparently after a year it came back, but why is unclear. https://www.kansascity.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/chow-town/article2742471.html https://www.kansascity.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/chow-tow... https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2013/04/17/FDA-dismisses-reports-of-US-import-ban-on-French-mimolette-cheese https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2013/04/17/FDA-dismiss... French raw milk cheeses are still banned, though.
- swimfar 6y agoNot all raw milk cheese is banned. Raw milk cheeses that have been aged less than 60 days are not allowed in the US and Canada(excluding Quebec). You can buy raw milk cheese in most supermarkets in the US.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Animats 6y agoJust irradiate it. Problem solved.