Meet Floribel Hernandez Cuenca and Manuel Martin. California police arrested the pair on “felony cheese making charges” after they tried to sell 375 pounds of bathtub cheese at an open-air market in San Bernardino. Bathtub cheese, otherwise known as “illegal soft cheese,” can cause a range of maladies including listeria, salmonella, and everybody’s favorite gut goblin, E. coli.
The 375 pounds of seized illegal cheese included panela, queso fresco and queso oxaca varieties, the [California Department of Food and Agriculture] says. It was a significant find, the department says.“Illegally produced is cheese is serious threat to public health,” says CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura.
We suggest that the pair be sentenced to eat their wares, preferably in public.
Arrests drain bathtub cheese sellers [Central Valley Business Times via BarfBlog]
(Photo: jthorvath)
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@speedwell: I’ll buy that. Now if only I could find a grocery store that had milk as fresh and tasty as the University of Georgia… until then, I’ll have to stick to raw milk sources, because even the overpriced organics they have at the grocery store don’t taste as good.
@bluegus32: of course, you forget that back then we also didn’t have refrigeration or modern sterilization methods. Nor did we have smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, measles, mumps and pertussis whipped.
The swap meet has recently introduced “free tacos”. Wonder what meat is in them? (is your cat missing?)
“Illegally produced is cheese is (a) serious threat to public health,” says CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura.–
Wrong! Legality of a product makes no difference in its quality. Kawamura is saying that legally-produced cheese is safe, and illegal is not. What logic!?
The threat here, most likely, is that illegal cheese producers are using raw milk to make cheese, whereas the legal cheese is made with the highly-inferior treated milk (pasteurized, homo-genized, etc.) and they can’t allow that.
Raw milk products contain vitamins, enzymes and bacteria (mostly beneficial) and is (usually) not a danger to your health. As long as cleanliness is observed in the production of milk and milk products, there shouldn’t be a health issue.
On the other hand, processed milk is not healthy for anyone.
Pasteurizing destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamins, denatures (damages) fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamin B12 and vitamin B6, kills beneficial bacteria and promotes pathogens. Pasteurized cow’s milk is the number one allergic food in this country.
Pasteurization has been associated with a number of symptoms and illnesses ranging from diarrhea, cramps and gastrointestinal bleeding to heart disease, cancer and arteriosclerosis.
Homogenization: When fat globules are forcibly broken up by mechanical means, it allows an enzyme associated with milk fat, known as xanthine oxidase, to become free and penetrate the intestinal wall. Once xanthine oxidase gets through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream, it is capable of creating scar damage to the heart and arteries, which in turn may stimulate the body to release cholesterol into the blood in an attempt to lay a protective fatty material on the scarred areas. This can lead to arteriosclerosis. It should be noted that this effect is not a problem with natural (unhomogenized) cow milk. In unhomogenized milk this enzyme is normally excreted from the body without much absorption.
People! don’t keep swallowing the propaganda from the government and milk producers–educate yourselves, by searching the Web for articles and books on the subject!
Pasturization, homogenization etc. have nothing to do with this issue. The cheese was not produced under any standards of any kind. You don’t know where it came from, how it was produced or anything else. You don’t know the cleanliness of the production area nor the person who handled it.
@mrearly2:
@SoCalGNX: Exactly. Thank you for stating what I thought would be obvious but is not.
@mrearly2: Before telling people to do research, maybe you could offer citations for your claims as you are the one who seems to be taking the position contrary to most peoples’ knowledge. I just did a web search and did not find one research paper supporting your position. Found lots of blogs and web sites that I did not recognize but no science. Please, list some papers to support your position. It is too easy to say ‘x is so and I have proof so look it up.’ If you are going to take such positions, you really should cite your sources rather than going off on a position without any support. Do not take this as an attack on your position, as I found it very interesting…this is more of a critique on your arguing method. When taking a contrary to general knowledge position, please list your own sources and do not tell the readers to look it up for themselves. It turns your argument into a rant rather than a factually based position. Thanks.
@mrearly2: “As long as cleanliness is observed in the production of milk and milk products, there shouldn’t be a health issue.”
So… how do we know if “cleanliness is observed”? We send inspectors around. How do we know if unlicensed (i.e. “bathtub”) cheesemakers are using safe production techniques? We don’t, since the people who do inspections don’t know about them. Seriously, this ain’t rocket science.
As for your rant about unpasteurized, unhomogenized milk: I’m with @Javert. Put up citations from reputable sources (as opposed to mentioning unspecified websites) or put a cork in it.
@Javert: Yes, thank you. Uncited claims are a major pet peeve.
I don’t really have anything useful to add, just wanted to say that “Bathtub Cheese” would be a cool band name.
SW