In yet another case of labeling tricks and deception where store bought food is concerned, many brands of raw cheese produced in the United States and sold at the healthfood store and specialty shops are anything but.
Organic Valley, the corporate behemoth that has gone to the Dark Side where raw, fresh, organic, healthgiving grassfed milk is concerned is not surprisingly the worst offender of this loophole in the USDA regulations.
According to Federal Law 7 (CFR 58.438):
“If the cheese is labeled as pasteurized, the milk shall be pasteurized by subjecting every particle of milk to a minimum temperature of 161 degrees Fahrenheit for not less than 15 [fifteen] seconds or by any other acceptable combination of temperature and time treatment approved by the Administrator.”
For FLUID PRODUCTS, “vat pasteurization” is defined as heating at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 30 minutes; heating at 161 degrees for at least 15 seconds is called “high temperature short time pasteurization” [7 CFR 58.101].
What does this mean in layman’s terms?
It means that any cheese where the milk is heated to a temperature under 161 degrees Fahrenheit or less than 15 seconds could be called “raw” and labeled as such according to this definition!
Organic Valley admits on its website that its raw cheese is “subpasteurized”, but fails to identify just how close subpasteurized is to the real thing. This is typical marketing deception and labeling games by a company which, many months ago, I stopped buying products from.
Subpasteurization still heats the milk to an obscenely high temperature which destroys nutrition and enzymes. Calling such a product “raw” is deceptive, misleading, if not downright insulting to the sensibilities and intelligence of its customers.
While Organic Valley is no doubt the worst offender of this regulatory loophole, any other cheese sold in stores, produced in the United States and labeled as “raw” is also likely heated to subpasteurization temperatures. Even “raw” goat cheese would fall under this loophole.
I called the company Tree of Life which also produces “raw” cheese sold in healthfood stores, but my questions about the true rawness of their cheeses were not answered and requests for a return call from someone who could provide me with answers were not returned.
On a positive note, a very small dairy near my metro area which sells raw goat cheese in stores around town was very upfront and forthright with their answers about how the cheese is produced. This dairy does truly produce raw cheese as the milk is only warmed to 98F which is well within the limits for enzyme and nutrient preservation.
Buy Local from a Trusted Small Farm
The lesson to be learned here is that the only way to be sure that the cheese you buy comes from truly raw milk is to buy from a preferably local, small dairy farm that specializes in cheesemaking and to talk to the cheesemaker yourself. To find a small farm near you, check out the Real Milk website or contact your local Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leaders from around the world for their list of locally produced goods.
If you don’t have a local dairy farm near you that makes cheese, contact the Weston A. Price Foundation and order the 2010 Shopping Guide for $3 plus shipping. This handy little brochure fits in your pocket or purse and lists many small farms across North America where you can mail order truly raw cheese.
And, whatever you do, don’t buy the fake “raw” cheese from Organic Valley!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Many thanks to Pete Kennedy, Esq. of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund for tracking down the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) references for this article.
Thanks David I’m going to look into those cheeses you recomended. Would that be http://www.grassfields.com ?
No prob, here is the link.
http://www.grassfieldscheese.com/cheese.html
Thanks for yet another enlightening post. I’ve been buying Orgainc Valley products. Deceived again!! Yet another boycott in the works for me. I make and produce 90% of my food already, I guess one more thing won’t change too much of my life. So far, I have raw milk available to me, until the govt takes that away too but I do like bought cheese…..
Curious. Is their subpasteurized “better” for you than the “regular” cheeses or is it just as bad. So much to learn. I’m so grateful for this website and Sarah’s commitment to it.
Not trying to answer for Sarah, but IMO it’s just as bad. OV now has on the label, “Heated to 158 F for 15 seconds. That’s only a few degrees below pasteurization. When I first noticed, I gave them a call. They said the heating was done for the flavor profile. Yeah right. I immediately switched to a brand available out here in Cali called “Sierra Nevada Cheese Co.” They confirmed on the phone that their raw cheeses are never heated past 108 F. Tastes better too. I also order farmstead raw cheese online from Grassfields in Michigan. Superb taste, never heated past 104 F, organic and grassfed, and awesome prices.
Glad to hear Sierra Nevada’s raw cheese is good… We order their cheese through Azure Standard and love it! I assumed it was actually raw because it molds quicker than any other “raw” cheddar I’ve had. OV needs to wake up and smell the change coming! If they don’t return to their roots they’re going to be left behind!
I sent an email to Sierra Nevada Cheese Co. on Feb 29, 2016 to ask the maximum temperature of their raw milk cheese and got the following reply the next day, March 1, 2016:
Thank you for contacting Sierra Nevada Cheese. The maximum temperature that our raw products ever end up hitting is 135 degrees Fahrenheit for no longer than 16 seconds. The rest of the time the product never gets heated above 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
I find it totally funny that so many people believe for whatever reason that cow milk products are good for humans…LOL…I’m sure most humans would not consume human breast milk yet they consume milk from cow teats…folks, WAKE UP!…this is food for the baby calf, it’s not produced with our bodies in mind.
Lol, how lame Kathryn K. By your logic, humans should stop eating most if not all foods. For what whole foods ARE produced “with our bodies in mind?”
Kathryn, if you do some more research, you find that the bacteria and enzymes in the cow’s milk digest the elements in the milk which the human body considers to be toxic and foreign to it. It is pasteurization which causes the cow proteins to wreak havoc on the human system since the good bacteria and enzymes have been devitalized. You cannot shun healthy farmers who have been drinking raw milk products for millennia.
OV’s “raw” cheese is heated to 158 degrees now! In Europe anything above 145 degrees is considered “pasteurized.”
Also, OV’s eggs come from cows fed “organic” SOY and CORN!!!!!!!!!!
I commented on their site to switch to soy-free organic chicken feed – almost ALL the big “organic” chicken feed suppliers now have soy-free feed available in bulk (this was impossible to find just one year ago, though. Apparently the feed suppliers must have gotten lots of negative feedback over soy since then).
My local (Upstate NY; I live on Long Island) cheese is mostly labelled pasteurized. But now I am even questioning the few that are labelled “raw.” If I’m going to cook with it (omelettes), I don’t care, but in NY ALL fresh cheeses MUST be pasteurized, so fresh goat and sheep cheese must be dead by law 🙁
Trader Joes – I know that their own brand is made by a reputable cheesemaker in CA. I HIGHLY DOUBT it is TRULY “RAW” though! For the same reasons as OV – shelf-life.
BTW: In NY non-homogenized milk is ILLEGAL!!! Many Trader Joes carry it, but NOT in NY!!!
In fact, Natural by Nature in glass bottles cannot be sold in NY either (because it is not homogenized). Hilarious – it comes from NJ – right next door! I have to drive to NJ, PA or CT to get it. Easier to just visit my brother in Vermont and get REAL raw milk from his local CSA dairy farmer! But raw milk butter is illegal to sell in Vermont (they make it for themselves and “close friends”).
When I got organic food delivered I was getting 3-4 dozen OV eggs every two weeks. We cancelled for the summer, and now just buy TJ’s Organic eggs. None of the local egg farmers around here (very few) are soy-free either 🙁 Of the commercial eggs available, only OV and TJ’s do not make me sick, for some reason.
If you want TRULY raw cheese, imported from REPUTABLE European cheesemakers is the ONLY way to go if you do not have a trusted local source. But you won’t find anything for less than $25 a pound!
As for co-ops, they are good and bad. Annoyingly, they have all given in to the demands of Big Brother, so they will NEVER be a source of truly “raw” anything! I still support Cabot Creamery – their aged cheddars are still the best and at a decent price.
Interestingly, many customers complained about GMO corn in the feed, and last year Cabot responded on their website that they are not certified GMO-free because many farmers supplement with corn in the winter (I have NEVER seen a dairy farm in the NE where the cows were locked up – they all roam the pastures freely year-round. I did read about one CAFO farm in Vermont; but economically, buying grains for cows is inefficient up here where the few remaining dairies are generations-old with plenty of pasture and cheap hay in winter). The funny thing is, I recently bought a pound of Cabot cheddar and the label said GMO-free or something like that, so my guess is that the co-op has decided to give in to the public pressure and require its farmers to go GMO, hormone and antibiotic-free. I don’t see how they could stay in business much longer otherwise.
Quality of the milk – aside from Artisanal Cheese, no, the milk used to make cheese and yogurt will ALWAYS be the lesser-quality milk that they cannot sell as “milk.” Last year Organic Pastures almost went out of business because they had no buyers for their skim milk left over after making their grass-fed butter. This is why commercial cheese and yogurt is usually made from skim and lowfat milk (read the ingredients) – the whole milk is sold as milk and the cream used to make butter. Artisanal Cheese is made from whole milk direct from the cow / goat / sheep on purpose and that is why it costs $25+ a pound!
That is why the dairy industry pushed the whole BS “low-fat milk is healthier” propaganda 50 years ago or so – because it made economic sense – convince people to drink low-fat and skim milk, then the dairy keeps the cream to turn into butter and sell for a premium. When people drank only whole milk, there was not much cream left to make butter with (even whole milk has the bulk of the actual cream skimmed off the top); so the dairy industry realized that they could convince people to drink “white water” for health benefits and then create 2 products from the same amount of milk – so now they sell skim milk and butter – 2 separate items to each customer – for almost twice the price and profits!
Funny – most milk from one company costs the same, whether skim, low-fat or whole. But last year I was in Target and they now carry a lot of Organic milk, (Horizon – UHT BAD, and also local regular pasturized Organic) and the whole milk actually cost 50 cents MORE than the skim and low-fat! It wasn’t bad at all, but TJ’s still tastes the best of all commercial Organic whole milk (not UHT) available. Honestly, I give Target credit on this one – selling fresh Organic milk and half-n-half at SUPER CHEAP prices. The problem is that ALL the Organic (fresh – not Horizon) milk would be sold out almost everytime I got there at night!
so that explains why organic valley “raw” cheese still made this lactose intol girl sick. Thanks for the info. I wonder when I got sick anyway if I would never be able to eat cheese again. Can’t wait till house sells so we can move to south (where we have wanted to go for more then 5 years) and start our own small family farm. cow and goats, chickens again and get my garden back. hate food at store. taste leaves something to be desired unless I pay $$$
I would like to know if peanuts in the shell are OK to eat.
Thank You, Robert
if organic, otherwise you are most likely getting GMO. peanuts are as big on that as corn is.
One comment about Organic Valley. I don’t know the history about the company but wasn’t it just started by farmers who wanted to get more money for their milk? It’s not like they all really cared about being organic. It’s about getting more for whatever they produce. If you take a regular farmer who knows nothing about how healthy raw milk is and you have a bunch of those people on the board, well….just saying. Buyer beware
my friends part of co-op did it for health. they eat/ drink it raw at home because well they can. so some are part of it for health
I HAD NO idea…. man, over time, OV’s reputation is REALLY changing in my mind. Thanks!!!
I have to be honest, I thrived on OV’s “raw” cheese for nearly 3 months with no other dairy products in my diet since it is hard to obtain raw milk where I live. I had no cavities during that time, and still managed to have hard teeth. I do believe that you can obtain nutrition from pasteurized fermented dairy products since the enzymes become alive during the fermentation process.
However, I finally found a small dairy farm who sells truly raw cheese, and will never purchase any of OV’s products ever again. I don’t like the idea that they can heat the milk to 155 degrees, and then claim that the cheese is “raw.” I also don’t like that they are so against raw dairy. It seems that we have to do a lot of homework in order to obtain high quality foods since there are so many loop holes in the food system whether it be food from a small farm or a large corporation.