Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes, and the Fight for Real Cheese by Bronwen Percival & Francis Percival

Author:Bronwen Percival & Francis Percival [Percival, Bronwen & Percival, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Cooking, History, Specific Ingredients, Dairy, Political Science, Public Policy, Agriculture & Food Policy, Technology & Engineering, Agriculture, General
ISBN: 9780520290150
Google: 9WkmDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-09-05T00:48:49.271000+00:00

FIGURE 7. The cultural cognition model applied to cheese.

To the right, the libertarian-modernist position is exemplified by the work of the Kehler brothers at the Cellars at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vermont. With its own on-site laboratory and a full-time microbiologist on staff, their entire organization is driven by the promise of technological developments. At the same time, with the hugely diverse range of cheeses that they produce and mature, the Kehlers self-consciously do not restrict themselves to a rules-based territorial framework of the sort that is found in Europe. This is in direct contrast to the top left quadrant of the figure, the authoritarian-traditionalists, where we find the logic of all rules-based, top-down classifications, such as those found in the Protected Designation of Origin system within the European Union.

Finally, in the top right, we have the regulatory agencies responsible for public health. One example is the FDA, but it could just as easily be any one of similar authorities in Europe, the Americas, or Australasia. In the cheese world, these authoritarian-modernists are typified by people like Monica Metz, those who are comfortable with top-down rules and regulations and enthusiastic about the modernist project to control nature. Here is where we find Paxson’s most dedicated Pasteurians.

Most importantly, this is not an exercise in putting people into cultural boxes just for the sake of it. The sociologist Joseph Gusfield describes the process of “status conflicts,” the symbolic political acts through which cultural groups legislate to glorify their values and demean those of others. While his principal historical case study was the temperance movement, we see exactly the same phenomenon in operation in the legislation governing our food.53 Just consider what would happen if actors associated with the wider food movement were suddenly appointed to key legislative and administrative roles. The established order would be swiftly overturned, and the regulatory agenda would ignore small-scale farmhouse producers and instead direct its fire at GMOs and the role of big business. Whether this would make the world a safer place is moot; it would legislate a different set of risks.

Despite the imminent prospect of more bitter culture war, considering our typology in light of Kahan’s research offers a tantalizing glimpse of a strategy that might solve raw-milk cheese’s communication problem. At present, those in the libertarian-traditional base who are the most enthusiastic advocates for raw-milk products are concerned that the government wants to take away their right to enjoy traditional products. It is an argument with tremendous emotional resonance to those who are already converts, but it completely cedes the science to regulators who find the prospect of raw-milk products culturally and emotionally distasteful.

Instead, we need to craft a message that has two components, each of which will resonate with both regulators and raw-milk advocates. The first is that anybody enthusiastic about the prospect of raw-milk cheese has to be enthusiastic about the necessity of regulation, not just in its existing sense, as a method to ensure safe products—although acknowledging this is a

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