The Monsanto analogy: How cheese has followed the path of Industrial Agriculture.

My response to the “Camembert Crisis” builds steam.

This is part two of what will likely be at least four.  It builds on the last piece called “The Seed Mother”.  In this series, I am developing an analogy between how agriculture and cheesemaking have gone down similar reckless paths. After identifying what is wrong, I suggest ways we can get back on a sane and healthy path.  I am also working towards addressing an issue that is causing a stir in the global cheese community: the “Camembert Crisis”.  I recommend reading This Article from culture magazine by Josh Windsor, whose knowledge about and philosophy toward cheese I can vouch for.

And yes, I know Monsanto has been consumed by Bayer. Same shit.

A naturally fermented Lactic Yak milk cheese with wild mold and fungus, that I made in Tibet.

Most of us are familiar with the arguments against industrial agriculture.  We understand the harm done by the model of indiscriminate plowing, sowing patented GMO seeds, over-application of pesticides and herbicides, and leaving soil bare between crop cycles.  Less discussed is how a similar route has been taken with dairy animals, milk, and cheese.  I want to identify and question the paradigm at the root of this industrial, control oriented, antibiotic approach to milk fermentation.  I also want explain how I think we can apply the logic of seed saving and organic gardening to cheesemaking. In this and future posts, I’ll use term “Milk Microbiota” to refer to the microbial communities native to raw milk. I’ll start by drawing parallels from which an analogy will emerge.

Image from the article linked to above.

1. Plowing = pasteurization.

Full on plowing is meant to knock out or severely impare the growth of wild plants, or anything besides the crops we plant.  It also disrupts the complex microbiological life of soil, the networks of fungal pathways, soil ecology.  The larger paradigm is to violently conquer what was living on a landscape, to remove trees, control waterways, eradicate the pesky wildness of a place.  Insects become pests and native plants weeds.

When we pasteurize milk, we are plowing the milk microbiota, which is seen as negative.  Native bacteria are potentially dangerous competitors.  Like weeds, they need to be removed.  Airborne fungus are pests, kill them before they grow.  In a self-fullfilling prophecy, the pests (pathogens and spoilage microbes) that can lurk in soil (milk) grow more abundant the more we follow this paradigm.  So pastuerization becomes increasingly compulsory, as we create the inherently unstable and unhealthy situation that is modern industrial dairying.  The deeper paradigm is that life is dangerous and cannot be trusted, we must conquer and control.  Remove the wildness from milk, strip it down to dead soil, then plant specific domesticated species, and prevent anything else from growing.

A less paranoid approach to dairying. Cogne, Italy.

2. Seeds = Culture, also known as starter.

Packaged, commercial starters are roughly equivalent to patented seeds.  Also known as select strain or direct vat set (DVS) starters, they are purchased from large agribusiness companies.  Being grown in a lab in isolation, removed from raw milk microbial communities, they have become domesticated and lost the resilience that results from natural selection. Like the breeds of vegetables in our supermarkets, these microbes have not been selected to make delicious, regionally specific cheese flavors, but to be consistent and homogenous.  We end up with cheese as a commodity crop designed to have shelf life and be consistently mediocre, looking pretty in plastic without alot of unregimented biology left hanging around.

These DVS starters must be continually purchased from the companies who make them, they cannot be used to generate stable mother cultures that can be indefinitely maintained by the maker.  So like the farmer buying patented seed from Monsanto, the cheesemaker is compelled to buy cultures from CHR Hansen or Danisco.   To make raw milk cheese with a heavy dose of DVS is like practicing no-till farming, but continuing to plant patented seeds.  Its not that black and white though, and some people use DVS in a light handed way, allowing raw milk microbes to still express in their cheese.

A make room in Georgia, that cannot be sanitized of life.

3.  Pesticide/herbicide = sanitizer, acid and alkaline cleaning products.   Cheesemakers and dairy farmers are encouraged or required to work with materials such as stainless steel and food grade plastics that are considered easy to sanitize.  There are various types of sanitizers used, purchased from chemical supply companies.  The idea is to take out any competition to the microbes you buy in little packages, and remove milk residues and biofilms from your equipment. Kill the pests and weeds, take away their food.  When you plow (pasteurize) then scorch (sanitize) the earth, you remove its inherent ability to maintain a healthy populations of microorganism. You wipe out the defense system that indigenous microbial ecologies possess, and create a blank slate where unwanted microbes can flourish.

While peracetic acid is certainly not the equivalent of glyphosate, you can see the parallel.  I’m not opposed to all sanitizer usage, but to its required and paranoid application to anything that is coming into contact with milk or cheese.  The mentality behind it can go too far, expressing  the antibiotic fear of life, and desire to control that is also reflected in the use of patented seeds and the machines and chemicals of industrial farming.

The alternative, an heirloom sour milk culture.

What if, rather than plowing the milk, we looked at it as a source of beneficial microbes that we could team with, rather than try to eradicate?  What if we encouraged some of the plants that are native to the soil to grow, and developed cultivars through our continued intimacy with them?

My answers will be offered in part 3.  But I am curious how you would respond to these questions, and what you think of this piece in general?