Does the Food Standards Agency understand the microbiological properties of cheese? I doubt it, if the latest NHS guidance for pregnant women, which it drafted, is anything to go by.
In November 2020, the FSA revised its existing guidance that hard, raw milk cheeses were safe to eat, stating that all raw milk cheeses should be avoided during pregnancy.
In November 2021, it changed that guidance back again to read that ‘hard unpasteurised cheeses, such as parmesan, raw milk cheddar and gruyère’ could be safely consumed.
Progress at last.
But that still leaves problems with the guidance.
For instance, it warns against the consumption of ‘soft blue-veined cheeses such as Danish blue, gorgonzola and roquefort’, and classes crumbly stilton as a semi-hard cheese along with rubbery edam, although the texture of these two cheeses is – excuse the pun – chalk and cheese.
As a former cheesemonger myself, I believe it would be wiser to categorise moist stilton as posing a similar potential food poisoning risk to these soft blue cheeses.
Since the 1970s, highly informed cheese authorities at home and abroad have debated the unique characteristics of various cheeses with the Food Standards Agency, and the bearing these have on safety. The key issue is humidity, although salt levels also play a part.
Yet this NHS advice still demonstrates an over-reliance on pasteurisation as a guarantee of safety. It gives the thumbs-up to soft cheeses such as ricotta and cream cheese, provided they are pasteurised, when I would consider them to be risky and not a good idea for mothers-to-be, especially when sold loose on a deli counter.
Halloumi is another tricky one. For me it’s a firm, dry, very salty cheese, invariably eaten well-cooked, but it has been put in the ‘soft cheese’ class.
We need this advice to be coherent, clear, and sensible. In my opinion, it isn’t there yet.
Can I suggest the FSA sits down with scientifically up-to-date cheese experts and agrees a new categorisation of all the cheeses on sale in the UK – a list that abandons broad-brush, hard/soft and raw/pasteurised criteria for well-researched recommendations on each named cheese?
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