Say Cheese, But Watch
Out For the FDA

By Digby Anderson
Copyright 2000 Wall Street Journal
July 21, 2000

The Food and Drug Administration is considering forbidding Americans to eat the best cheeses in the world because raw, unpasteurized but aged cheeses might be a health hazard.

Of course, the FDA doesn't actually call them the best cheeses. Despite having the word "food" in its title, the agency has never shown any interest in food -- at least not in the aspect of it that most people think essential, its taste. Already non-aged unpasteurized cheeses, which would make up perhaps a third of any decent French cheese board, are banned by the state in the land of the free. The FDA is now thinking of forbidding another third of the board. Some of the best Swiss, French, Italian and Spanish cheeses may soon become illegal.

It is a curious form of cost-benefit analysis this, in which the tiny risks of salmonella, listeria or E. coli poisoning are weighed heavily, while the pleasures enjoyed by thousands are not even considered. But it is more dangerous than that. In banning good raw cheese, the cheeses that gourmet opinion over centuries has found the best, the FDA has, as it were, forced an entry into the dining room of every American home. It stands there, uninvited, by the dining table, its long arms sweeping off that table what the homeowners had wanted to eat.

This perverted cost-benefit analysis either has justified or could justify confiscating all sorts of other excellent dishes. Think of beignets of brains deep fried in a light batter, or poached with beurre noir; game birds shot and properly hung till they are high; the ris de veau -- veal sweetbreads -- which Bertie Wooster would do anything to persuade his Aunt Dahlia's chef, Anatole, to cook a la financiere. If you have simpler tastes, just think of chickens, ducks, geese and their eggs -- all reared, killed and collected on small farms in good old-fashioned and now suspect ways. Think of milk itself, raw, creamy and delicious, and yogurt.

You don't care to? You're a pizza and hamburger eater? Then consider this. What is to stop Mr. FDA from barging into your kitchen as well? It's next to the dining room, not far in distance or logic. One significant but seldom mentioned cause of food contamination is the way consumers handle and keep food in their kitchens. They put raw meat next to cooked in the fridge. They use cloths for wiping for far too long. They clean by splashing water about, providing a nice environment for bugs. They don't use different chopping boards or knives for different foods.

Now knives: There's a thought. Did you know -- does the FDA know -- that knives are sharp and dangerous? You can cut yourself on a knife, and so could your children. Ban them (knives, not children) -- and blunt those forks too. And I'm afraid cooking will have to go as well. It is not safe or sensible to have boiling water, flaming gas and radiant electric coils in the same environment as little children. Have you seen what a seven-year-old's burned arm or scalded face looks like? Try the FDA cost-benefit analysis again -- not on this or that dish, but on cooking by heat in general. Then ban that and see what's left on your table to eat.

While he is here, why shouldn't Mr. FDA go into the yard or garden and confiscate the ax, the spade, the shears, the rake and the hoe. Beyond the garden is a golf course, which he should tell his chums in other nannying agencies about. There are people there, apparently sensible, modern people, projecting hard, potentially lethal little balls through the air at speed. And it's not just golf that could be banned. Once Mr. FDA has got out into the open, things indeed open out for him. The best kept secret in modern societies -- and it is kept secret by the health fascists themselves -- is the enormous toll from sports accidents; lives lost, children orphaned, old persons maimed, young girls disfigured, young boys disabled, women widowed, livelihoods wrecked, limbs lost, eyes blinded, legs crippled.

Not everybody will agree that banning these risky activities is laughable; nor indeed is controlling them in some other way. Why not make everyone who fries an egg wear a safety helmet and flame resistant T-shirt, for instance, as well as go on a two-week first-aid training course? There are many Americans who are already seriously, even terminally, risk-averse. Indeed, it is becoming clear that the U.S., only a century and a bit after the Civil War, is once again disunited. It is divided into two. There are grown-up, responsible people who are happy to weigh up hazards and pleasure, decide for themselves whether to play golf or eat aged cheese and, most important, accept the consequences and not blame others. In another age, one could have called them, without any sexism, "men." And then there are the risk-averse, fearful of the dangers in each mouthful, in every product, and in all activities. They want to be cocooned by endless regulation. They could be called, if we wanted a neutral sort of word, moral imbeciles.

The trick is to satisfy both the "men" and the moral imbeciles. It can be done. The government should enact its panoply of regulations. But it should also issue disclaimer cards for the men. So we might go into the cheese shop and show our card, which reads: "I am registered as a responsible grown-up, and this card means that I take responsibility for buying and using this goat's cheese. I promise not to blame you, or to seek reparations, in the event of any indigestion." Then the men can get on and enjoy life while the moral imbeciles cower safely in their empty homes.

Mr. Anderson is director of the Social Affairs Unit, a think tank in London.