- Michael Gebert
- Uplands farm, near Dodgeville, Wisconsin
Rush Creek Reserve, one of the most acclaimed artisanal cheeses in America, will not be made this year—and possibly never again. The reason is that new regulations from Washington appear to be poised to destroy much of the existing artisanal cheese movement. Yesterday I ran the first part of an interview with Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese Co. in Wisconsin, who last week canceled production of Rush Creek Reserve, a soft French-style cheese made from raw milk and aged 60 days. In the second part of our interview, he explains the regulatory environment that led to his decision.
What’s changed over the last year or two is that they’ve taken their concern with soft, raw milk cheese and they’ve increased the pressure on producers making those cheeses. And they’re doing that in ways that are not transparent, not predictable, and that creates confusion. And like any small business owner in any industry, you want to know what the rules are. It’s very difficult to make plans, and to make budgets, and to extend yourself not knowing how you or your product is going to be treated by the government.
So when the inspector was there in the summer, did you know that this was likely coming down? Did the inspector know?
You look at a cheese that’s aged for two months, like Rush Creek, and I have plenty of time to test that product and prove that it’s safe, which I do with every batch. Fluid raw milk ought to be consumed within a day or two—you may not have time to test every lot of fluid raw milk. The products have a different level of risk—I’m not saying that the risk for raw milk is unacceptable, but with cheeses, we can prove that they’re safe, and that’s an advantage that cheese will always have over milk.
